The United Nations refugee agency said Friday it was receiving increased funding thanks to special initiatives launched in recent years to raise donations from Muslims.
The day after the beginning of Ramadan, UNHCR revealed a positive outcome of its initiative to raise funds through zakat and charity.
About $200 million has been collected since the Zakat Fund initiative was launched in 2017, which also includes charity.
"Over the past five years, we have been able to help 6 million people, mostly in Muslim countries, through zakat and charity," UNHCR representative in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Khalid Khalifa told a press conference in Geneva.
With these funds, UNHCR supports people at risk in 26 countries. The communities receiving the most support are Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, internally displaced people in Yemen and Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
Last year, the fund received contributions of $21.3 million in zakat and $16.7 million in charity, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said.
Khalifa added that the aid is mainly directed to Muslim-majority countries, but "we don't just help Muslims, we don't divide beneficiaries on the basis of religion."
But he added that compared to UNHCR's multi-billion dollar global budget, Islamic philanthropy was "just a drop in the ocean." "I hope it will be much bigger in the future."
Khalifa said the fund is trying to reduce its dependence "on large donors and rely more on small individual donors".
"Last year, we raised more than $20 million in Ramadan alone," he said, adding that "we hope to exceed that figure this year."