Yemen’s Warring Factions Agree to Trade More Than 1000 Prisoners

Civilians displaced by the war in Yemen (Flickr)

Warring parties in Yemen agreed to exchange more than 1000 prisoners during UN mediated talks in Glion, Switzerland on September 27. The two parties, the internationally recognized Yemeni government and the Ansar Allah Houthi movement, acted as part of a larger effort to build peace and trust in the country. This stands as the largest prisoner exchange of the conflict so far.

The war in Yemen began in 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthis seized Sana’a and much of the country’s North. A Saudi-led coalition entered the war months later in 2015 on behalf of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi’s government. According to the UN, the war in Yemen has since transformed into the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. More than 10,000 civilians have died or received injury during airstrikes while another 85,000 have lost their lives to disease and starvation. The UN also reports that 3.6 million people have suffered displacement and another 24 million desperately need international aid.

After many years of fighting, the two parties signed a deal in Stockholm in 2018 to exchange 15,000 prisoners. However, the pact has taken much time to implement, and parts of it have yet to come into practice. Last year, the Houthis freed 290 prisoners while Saudi Arabia released 128. A locally mediated exchange also took place in the Taiz governorate of Yemen, freeing dozens more. The International Committee of the Red Cross also facilitated the release of six Saudis by the Houthis in January. However, this still falls short of the amount agreed to in the 2018 deal.

After a ten-day meeting of the prisoners’ exchange committee this month, UN envoy Martin Griffiths announced that the two sides would free a total of 1,081 prisoners, with 400 freed from the Houthi side and 681 Houthis freed from the Saudi coalition. Hadi, according to diplomatic sources, reportedly hesitated to agree to the exchange until his brother, General Nasser, could participate in the second phase of the meetings.

The UN and ICRC both hope the talks send a message that peace remains possible with when everyone compromises. Specifically, the UN Secretary-General “urges the parties to build on this momentum and finalize arrangements for the release of all remaining detainees.” Yemini Minister of Human Rights, Mohamed Askar, voiced his hope that they can “continue efforts to alleviate the suffering of our people and… achieve permanent and comprehensive peace for all Yemenis.” Abdulkader al-Murtada of the Houthi prisoner exchange committee also considers this exchange “to be one of building trust between the parties.” 

However, Elisabeth Kendall, Yemen analyst at University of Oxford, while recognizing that this exchanges moves everyone in the right direction, cautions that the parties still have a ways to go until satisfying the earlier 15,000-person exchange, and even farther from “tackling the vast gap that needs to be closed between the warring sides before peace talks can get underway.”