2025: Deadline for the completion of the first phase of Neom.
“Years”: The amount of time crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman said it would take to attract investors to the project after the regime’s killing of dissident journalist Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul.
26,500 square km: The area Neom is planned to cover.
20,000: Hawaitat tribespeople who will be forced to leave their land for Neom to be built.
Eight: Huwaitat tribespeople known to have been detained for opposing eviction from their land to make way for Neom.
One: Huwaitat tribesperson, Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, killed by the regime for speaking out against the forced displacement.
Flying cars, robot servants, robot dinosaurs and an artificial moon: Four of the promised attractions to Neom that are based on technology that does not exist.
172: Saudi Arabia’s place on Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, out of 180. The organisation ranks the kingdom as the eighth worst place in the world for press freedom.
76%: The proportion of coronavirus cases who were non-Saudi nationals, mainly migrant workers – who will be building Neom and servicing its population.
184: Number of executions in Saudi Arabia in 2019 – the highest number on record.
37: Executions in a single day, 23 April 2019, 32 of whom were Shi’a men on charges of “terrorism”.
$500 billion: the planned cost of Neom’s construction.
$26.9 billion: GDP of Yemen, a country devastated a war largely driven by Saudi Arabia.
100,000: Deaths since 2015 as a result of that war. One: The number of people who have control over Saudi society – crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman.