Government and Houthis agree on largest prisoner exchange in Yemen

The internationally recognised government of Yemen and the Houthi rebels agreed on Sunday to the biggest prisoner exchange since the beginning of the conflict more than five years ago, reviving the pact reached and not implemented two years ago in Sweden.

The government and the Houthis undertook to exchange 1,081 prisoners of war after more than a week of UN-sponsored negotiations in Switzerland between the most absolute secrecy.

The UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, announced the agreement at a press conference in Geneva, which would represent "the largest release of prisoners in the history of the conflict in Yemen".

According to the Houthis, it has been agreed to release 400 rebels and 681 prisoners from the government side, including 15 Saudis and 4 Sudanese, who are fighting on the side of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi.

The rebel movement announced in a communiqué that the prisoner exchange will begin on 15 October and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will make the necessary preparations over the next two weeks.

Griffiths thanked the parties for their "constructive, positive and tireless commitment during the negotiations", which began on 17 September and have been conducted in a very airtight atmosphere.

The special envoy also thanked Switzerland for hosting the talks, despite "travel restrictions", and said the parties had agreed to continue negotiating the release of all prisoners and detainees, in accordance with UN resolutions and previous agreements.

Today's agreement demonstrates that "peaceful negotiations can and will succeed in bringing relief to the suffering of the Yemeni people", said Griffiths, and he encouraged the parties to "move forward together towards a negotiated solution for a lasting peace in Yemen".

The agreement fulfils one of the points agreed in Stockholm in December 2018, when the government and the rebels committed themselves to freeing all prisoners as a measure to build confidence and advance the peace process, although until now a list of names had not been finalised.

The agreement managed to halt the conflict at the gates of the city of Al-Hodeida, the country's main port and in the hands of the Houthis, and opened up a process for exchanging 16,000 prisoners.

However, the process did not progress with the prisoners, and the exchanges that have taken place between Houthis and the Saudi Arabian-led military coalition, which intervenes in Yemen in support of the government forces, have been outside the mechanism set up by the Stockholm pact.

The ICRC mediated these exchanges and will act as an intermediary in the release of the 1,081 prisoners. Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC's regional director for the Middle East, said at a press conference on Sunday with Griffiths that the humanitarian organization will offer its experience in this type of operation and called on the parties to agree on a "concrete implementation plan" to make the exchange a reality. Carboni stated that this is "a very positive step" within the framework of the Stockholm agreement and he was confident that "it will help to lay a solid foundation for the peace talks". "This release will alleviate the suffering of many detainees and their families, who have been waiting for so long to get back together," he added, looking forward to seeing other similar agreements in the near future because "many families are still waiting".

Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry of the internationally recognised government called in a brief statement for the implementation of the agreement in this and the following phases "without any delay". "The question of the prisoners is a purely humanitarian issue. That is why the government asked that all the points of the agreement be implemented without distinction, since most of those we are asking for (their release) are civilians, activists and the forcibly disappeared," Exteriores said through his Twitter account.

The conflict in Yemen began at the end of 2014, when the Houthis conquered large parts of the north and west of the country, including the capital Sana'a, from which the government was expelled leading to the intervention of the Arab coalition in March 2015.