Since the early 2000s, the governments of Saudi Arabia (KSA), the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, and Qatar have become increasingly important actors in the humanitarian system. KSA, the UAE, and Kuwait have each regularly been among the top ten donors in the world and provided a majority of assistance in several major crises. While Qatar has provided less overall assistance, it is one of the most generous governments when measured as a percentage of gross national income. In addition to their generosity, the wealthiest Gulf states have played leading roles in building Islamic assistance mechanisms while taking greater interest in the governance of UN and INGO humanitarian organizations. The growing involvement of the Gulf states presents the USG with an opportunity it must not miss.
Over the last seventy years, the government of the United States (USG) and its European allies provided a vast majority of humanitarian assistance (HA) and built a humanitarian system that is highly responsive to their interests and needs. However, the continued dominance of the West in humanitarian governance and finance is unsustainable. As global humanitarian needs continue to outpace funding, the pool of donors must expand, and the leadership of the humanitarian regime needs to incorporate new stakeholders. The Gulf states have the potential to play a key role in this process of change.
Working with Gulf states will be complicated. These states each have multifaceted relationships with the USG and are critical to American interests on many fronts. Most of the Gulf states host US military installations and have taken part in US security operations. These states also play critical roles in the international economy, particularly, but not exclusively, through their role as swing energy producers. In diplomacy, several of the Gulf states have acted as irreplaceable backchannels and mediators for successive American administrations. In all of these contexts, the Gulf states are no longer American proxies, if they ever were. As highly sophisticated states with a clear sense of their own interests, the Gulf states are global players in their own right.
If the USG hopes to work with the Gulf states on humanitarian issues over the long-term, it will need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Security interests, human rights concerns, and economic cooperation will compete for attention with humanitarian partnership. However, humanitarian engagement with the Gulf states provides an opportunity for mutual benefit and the chance to increase Gulf state buy-in to the US-led international order. Therefore, elevating humanitarian cooperation with the Gulf states to an administration priority is critical.