A United Nations document has revealed that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates conditioned $930m of aid to Yemen on a UN agency providing favourable publicity for that contribution, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.
According to the leaked document, the Gulf countries said future donations to the UN's OCHA aid agency would be tied to the amount of positive coverage their humanitarian efforts in Yemen received, the newspaper reported.
That includes a demand that OCHA seek favourable media coverage in major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Guardian.
“We consider it very important to ensure that our dear fellow Yemenis are all aware of our donations," reads the document, entitled Visibility Plan, as reported by the Guardian.
"More emphasis should be placed on strengthening the local visibility plan by engaging local media…so that donors get deserved recognition and not to be overshadowed by the recipient agencies’ visibility.”
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