During the closing day of the 47th Session of the General Assembly meeting of the Arab Red Crescent and Red Cross Organisation (ARCO), hosted by Qatar Red Crescent Society (QRCS) under the auspices of HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, the current Secretary-General Dr Saleh bin Hamad al-Tuwaijri, was re-elected for a four-year tenure.
The meeting discussed ARCO’s financial reports, committee reports, the Arab Initiative of Environmental Education and Waste Management Investment Project, the ARCO Disaster Management Project, and the Volunteering Platform Project.
They approved the Executive Committee’s report, the Secretary-General’s report for the period from April 2022 to June 2023, the amendments to the statute, the criteria of nomination for Movement-level positions, and the organisation’s Contingency Fund regulations. The 48th Session of ARCO will be held in Damascus, Syria.
The final report expressed concern about the increasingly worsening humanitarian conditions in many Arab countries, particularly Yemen, Syria, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, and Palestine. In tandem with the Covid-19 pandemic, the economic crisis and armed conflicts, there was an alarming decline in standards of living and services, as well as growing numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees.
The key recommendations included in the final report are as follows:
- Calling on the international community (governments, international governmental and non-governmental organisations) to intensify efforts and humanitarian aid for Sudan, Syria, Somalia, and Djibouti.
- Calling for an Arab disaster management team from RCRC organisations, under the supervision of ARCO, capitalising on cloud technology as much as possible to facilitate connectivity among National Societies, and creating a shared unified database.
- Calling on National Societies to create their own international humanitarian law (IHL) departments, which would be supported by ARCO.
- Urging National Societies to better invest in technology and standardise work procedures across ARCO.
- Calling for training and capacity-building curricula and standards for National Societies unified qualification systems across the Arab world, especially in medical and ambulance services.
- Calling on the Arab League to support Arab governments technically to enact national legislations that encourage and stimulate volunteerism.
- Renaming the “Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq Medal” to the “ARCO Medal” in two ranks.
- Calling on National Societies to contribute to environmental sanitation by implementing the waste management project, as well as calling to support National Societies in this respect.
- Calling for benefiting from successful experiences in waste management and processing, as well as sharing expertise with other National Societies (for example, the experience of QRCS).
