Qatar
Qatar’s development co-operation and humanitarian assistance aligns with its National Vision 2030, which aims to make the country a prominent global actor in international development co-operation, and is guided by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Qatar’s seeks to align its practices with major international donors. Qatar’s official development assistance (ODA) is estimated at USD 704.7 million (preliminary data) in 2023, representing 0.31% of its gross national income (GNI).1
Find the methodological notes behind the profile here.
Qatar’s ODA is mainly provided through the Qatar Fund for Development (QFFD). The QFFD is a government entity and works through grants, concessional and commercial loans, guarantees, and investments. The QFFD promotes human development and poverty alleviation by strengthening health services and educational systems, supporting economic development, mobilising humanitarian aid, and enhancing communities’ resilience towards climate change.
The QFFD is committed to development effectiveness and humanitarian principles and has been implementing a range of initiatives to promote co-ordinated, effective and sustainable support to communities and countries in need. It engages in partnerships with multilateral agencies, bilateral providers, the private sector and civil society organisations (CSOs). The QFFD targets projects in education, healthcare, social services, infrastructure, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and economic development for vulnerable populations. It places importance on innovation and maintaining predictability and flexibility in its financing of development and humanitarian interventions.
Qatar provided USD 704.7 million (preliminary data) of ODA in 2023 (USD 675.3 million in constant terms) representing 0.31% of GNI. This was a decrease of 18.9% in real terms in volume and a decrease in the share of GNI from 2022. Within Qatar’s ODA portfolio in 2022, 99.3% was provided in the form of grants and 0.7% in the form of non-grants.2
Qatar provided most of its ODA bilaterally in 2022. Gross bilateral ODA was 88% of total ODA disbursements, with 13% channelled through multilateral organisations (earmarked contributions). Qatar allocated 12% of total ODA as core contributions to multilateral organisations.
In 2022, Qatar provided USD 6.4 million of net bilateral ODA to Ukraine to respond to the impacts of Russia’s war of aggression. USD 5 million (78.1%) of the amount was humanitarian assistance. In 2021, Qatar allocated USD 198 thousand of its ODA to Ukraine.
In 2022, Qatar provided USD 195.4 million of gross ODA to the multilateral system, an increase of 33.0% in real terms from 2021. Of this, USD 100 million was core multilateral ODA, while USD 95.4 million were non-core contributions earmarked for a specific country, region, theme or purpose. Project-type funding earmarked for a specific theme and/or country accounted for 85.5% of Qatar’s non-core contributions and 14.5% was programmatic funding (to pooled funds and specific-purpose programmes and funds).
Qatar’s contributions to multilateral organisations in 2022 were allocated to UN entities (74.6%), the World Bank Group and regional development banks (8.3%) and other multilateral organisations (17.1%), most notably the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund.
The UN system received 74.6% of Qatar’s multilateral contributions, over half of which (53.3%, USD 77.8 million) in the form of earmarked contributions. Out of a total volume of USD 145.8 million to the UN system, the top three UN recipients of Qatar’s support (core and earmarked contributions) were the WFP (USD 50 million), UNDP (USD 22.2 million) and UNOCHA (USD 18.7 million).
See the section on Geographic, sectoral and thematic focus of ODA for the breakdown of bilateral allocations, including ODA earmarked through the multilateral development system. Learn more about multilateral development finance.
In 2022, Qatar’s bilateral spending increased compared to the previous year. It provided USD 735.7 million of gross bilateral ODA (which includes earmarked contributions to multilateral organisations). This represented an increase of 23.9% in real terms from 2021.
In 2022, country programmable aid was 37% of Qatar’s gross bilateral ODA, compared to a non-DAC country average of 47%.
In 2022, Qatar channelled its bilateral ODA mainly through the public sector, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and multilateral organisations.
Civil society organisations
In 2022, CSOs received USD 104.1 million of gross bilateral ODA, almost all of it (95.7%) directed to or channelled through CSOs based in donor countries. Overall, 0.3% of gross bilateral ODA was allocated to CSOs as core contributions and 13.9% was channelled through CSOs to implement projects initiated by the donor (earmarked funding). From 2021 to 2022, the combined core and earmarked contributions for CSOs decreased as a share of bilateral ODA, from 15% to 14.1%.
Learn more about the DAC Recommendation on Enabling Civil Society in Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Aid.
In 2022, Qatar’s bilateral ODA was primarily focused on the Middle East. USD 499.8 million was allocated to the Middle East and USD 120 million to Africa, accounting for 67.9% and 16.3% of gross bilateral ODA. USD 55.1 million was allocated to Asia. Qatar’s earmarked contributions to multilateral organisations were mostly allocated to countries in the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan.
In 2022, 79.1% of gross bilateral ODA went to Qatar’s top 10 recipients. Its top 10 recipients are in the Middle East, South of Sahara Africa and South Asia. West Bank and Gaza Strip was the main recipient of Qatar’s bilateral ODA. The share of gross bilateral ODA not allocated by country was 5.5%.
In 2022, Qatar allocated 23.9% of its bilateral ODA to the least developed countries (LDCs), representing 0.09% of its GNI. Qatar allocated the highest share of gross bilateral ODA (59.9%) to lower-middle income countries (LMICs) in 2022, noting that 5.5% was unallocated by income group. Additionally, Qatar allocated 8.2% of gross bilateral ODA to land-locked developing countries (LLDCs) in 2022, equal to USD 60.2 million.
Fragile contexts
Support to fragile contexts reached USD 600.1 million in 2022, representing 81.6% of Qatar’s gross bilateral ODA. A share of 69.3% of this ODA was provided in the form of humanitarian assistance, decreasing from 70.3% in 2021. Learn more about support to fragile contexts on the States of Fragility platform.
Sectors
In 2022, more than half of Qatar’s bilateral ODA was allocated to humanitarian assistance. Investments in this area accounted for 58.1% of bilateral ODA commitments (USD 427.7 million). ODA for social infrastructure and services totalled USD 225.2 million, mostly focusing on education (USD 147.9 million) and support to government and civil society (USD 36.2 million), followed by USD 29.6 million for health and population Most of Qatar’s earmarked contributions to multilateral organisations were also allocated to humanitarian assistance and social sectors in 2022.
ODA for COVID-19
In 2022, Qatar disbursed USD 9.5 million in ODA for the COVID-19 response, down from USD 36.6 million in 2021. While 79% of this ODA related to activities in the health sector, USD 450 thousand was spent on the provision of vaccine doses to developing countries and USD 7.1 million on other medical aid. In 2022, Qatar extended USD 29.6 million for health and population, account for 4% of gross bilateral ODA, and representing an increase of 82.3% from 2019 in real terms.
Total official support for sustainable development is an international statistical standard that monitors all official and officially supported resources for financing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in developing countries, as well as for addressing global challenges. It provides a broader measure of development finance with the objective of increasing transparency and accountability of all external support that developing countries receive. In 2022, activities reported by Qatar as TOSSD totalled USD 940.1 million, up from USD 929.3 million in 2021, and Qatar’s TOSSD activities in support of sustainable development mostly targeted SDG 17 Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development, and SDG 4 Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Qatar’s support to SDG 17 mainly encompasses core contributions to multilateral organisations and research on sustainable development. Activity-level data on TOSSD by recipient are available at: https://tossd.online.
The QFFD is a public corporation and is affiliated with Qatar’s Council of Ministers. The fund, which provides grants, concessional loans and other forms of development finance on behalf of the state of Qatar, is overseen by a Board of Directors headed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 2023, the QFFD continued to focus on several key institutional initiatives. To deliver on the SDGs, and through a results-based approach, the QFFD has further strengthened its strategic partnerships on both the multilateral and bilateral levels by co-funding humanitarian and development interventions and providing multi-year unearmarked support and core contributions to several United Nations agencies.
In addition, the fund continued improving its governance framework for better policy alignment and aid predictability. It also enshrined its internal efficiency and accountability through digitisation and other organisation-wide development initiatives and capacity-building programmes. Finally, the QFFD further strengthened its internal procedures to ensure compliance and adherence to adopted policies, national laws and regulations, and international good practices, particularly those related to combating terrorist financing and extreme violence, money laundering, and other illicit financing schemes.
Other Qatari entities involved in the country’s development co-operation are Qatar Foundation, Qatar Airways, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Public Health, the Doha Institute, and Qatar University.
Qatar Fund for Development: https://qatarfund.org.qa
Qatar is a participant of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) since 2016, Qatar is a member of the Arab Coordination Group, and regularly participates in the Arab-DAC Dialogue on Development.
Qatar has been reporting to the OECD at activity level since 2020 for 2019 activities.
Qatar participated as observer in the DAC peer review of Switzerland in 2019 and the DAC peer review of the Netherlands in 2022/23. Based on its follow-up report to the Netherlands peer review, Qatar gained a profound understanding of diverse approaches, lessons learnt and sustainable practices of the Dutch development co-operation in order to improve its own systems and ways of working in the following focus areas of the peer review: internal capacity to manage complex challenges, locally led development, engaging in fragile contexts, and policy coherence for climate and development in trade and responsible business conduct.
The methodological notes provide further details on the definitions and statistical methodologies applied, including the grant-equivalent methodology, core and earmarked contributions to multilateral organisations, country programmable aid, channels of delivery, bilateral ODA unspecified/unallocated, bilateral allocable aid, the gender equality policy marker, and the environment markers.
Notes
← 1. DAC members adopted the grant-equivalent methodology starting from their reporting of 2018 data as a more accurate way to count the donor effort in development loans. See the methodological notes for further details.
← 2. Non-grants include sovereign loans, multilateral loans, equity investment and loans to the private sector.