The two-day World Humanitarian Summit, the first of its kind, officially kicked off on May 23 in Istanbul. Turkish President Recep Tayyyip Erdogan delivered the opening speech of the summit with a focus on Turkey’ efforts on humanitarian and development aid.
Erdoğan noted that Turkey was hosting more than 3 million Syrian and Iraqi migrants, pledging that the country would never close its doors on people and humanity regardless of their identities.
“We know very well that pain has no race, language and religion. With this understanding, Turkey conducts humanitarian and development aid in more than 140 countries of the world and realizes thousands of projects,” Erdoğan said.
The president also said the current systems were insufficient in the face of humanity’s urgent problems, noting that only some countries were taking more than their fair share of the burden.
Accordingly, Erdoğan urged all countries to shoulder responsibility on the issue. He said the country had spent more than $10 billion on migrants while the international community’s contributions remained at $455 million.
World leaders from United Nations member states, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Kuwaiti Emir al-Jaber al-Sabah are in Istanbul for the summit.
During the summit, at least 50 heads of government will announce several commitments to reduce humanitarian disasters.
In 2014, the U.N. reported that around $540 million of the roughly $135 billion global aid budget was spent on decreasing disaster risk.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is also expected to push for an increase in world spending on reducing disaster risk at the summit.
