Yemen’s warring sides have agreed on Sunday to exchange 1,081 detainees and prisoners during the first stage of talks in Switzerland.
The Houthi militia will release 400 government prisoners while the Yemeni government will free 681 Houthi fighters, including on the ground deals for 20 prisoners, a source close to the deal said.
The deal came after a week-long fourth meeting of the Supervisory Committee on the Implementation of the Prisoners’ Exchange Agreement and builds on the release plan that the parties had agreed in Amman in February.
There are four VIPs in the prisoner swap agreement, including President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s brother, General Nasser, who will be in the second phase of the exchange of about 350 people, yet to be agreed.
The Yemeni president had been reluctant to agree to the prisoner swap until the second group that included his brother was agreed, a diplomatic source close to the matter told Arab News.
Saudi Arabia’s deputy defense minister, Khalid bin Salman, had to personally persuade Hadi to agree to the 1,081-prisoner exchange, the source said.
“I urge the parties to move forward immediately with the release and to spare no effort in building upon this momentum to swiftly agree to releasing more detainees,” United Nations Special Envoy Martin Griffiths said.
Griffiths and an official from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are in Switzerland leading a committee overseeing a prisoner swap deal first agreed at peace talks in Dec. 2018.
“The agreement signed today is a positive step for hundreds of detainees and their families back home who have been separated for years and will be reunited soon… We call on all parties to continue with the same urgency towards agreeing on a concrete implementation plan, so this operation can move from signatures on paper to reality on the ground’’, said Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC Middle East regional director.
The Sweden deal contained a prisoner swap which aimed for the release of some 15,000 detainees, split between both sides, but has been slowly and only partially implemented.
The Houthis last year freed 290 prisoners and Saudi Arabia released 128, while a locally mediated swap in Taiz governorate saw dozens freed. In January 2020, the ICRC facilitated the release of six Saudis held by the Houthis.
Yemeni Minister of Human Rights, Mohamed Askar, said he hoped that the latest prisoner exchanged agreement would lead to peace in Yemen and end to human rights violations after six years of war.
“We will continue efforts to alleviate the suffering of our people and…to achieve permanent and comprehensive peace for all Yemenis,” Askar said in a tweet shortly after the deal was announced.
Elisabeth Kendall, Yemen analyst and research fellow at University of Oxford, said that although the deal was a long way from the 16,000 prisoners that was reportedly agreed in Stockholm at the end of 2018, it is a move in the right direction.
“This step has to be viewed positively, given how polarised the warring sides now are and how intractable the conflict has become,” Kendall told Arab News.
However, she cautioned that this “trust-building measure” will only be effective if it is implemented, as previous failed agreements have led to mistrust between the warring sides.
“A prisoner swap is nowhere even close to tackling the vast gap that needs to be closed between the warring sides before peace talks can get underway.”
