The International Committee of the Red Cross finished on Sunday a first round of visits to 279 people detained at a major facility in Yemen’s main southern city of Aden.
"We are encouraged by the visits in Aden, the first of their kind there in nearly three years of hostilities," said ICRC president Peter Maurer in a statement.
“They add to the positive dynamic generated by similar visits to conflict-related detainees that have been ongoing in Sanaa since November 2017.”
The statement said that the ICRC has had hundreds of families in Yemen and outside the country approach them over the years to ask about the fate of a loved one.
Some did not know if missing relatives were dead or alive, it added.
"Is my son alive? The answer to this simple question, the ability for a family to know the fate of a missing relative, contributes to the building of mutual trust among Yemeni communities," said the ICRC's head of delegation in Yemen, Alexandre Faite.
"As positive as these visits in Aden and Sanaa are, more needs to be done. We encourage all sides in Yemen to grant access to all those detained in relation with the ongoing conflict.
“Visits to detainees are a humanitarian imperative from which all sides can only benefit.”
Last year, the ICRC visited 11,000 detainees in Yemen.
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Meanwhile, the United States has laid off 360 local staff in Yemen three years after closing its embassy as the civil war spread in the country.
Ambassador Matthew Tueller wrote to workers saying new US State Department regulations about suspended embassies meant he could no longer keep them on, in the letter dated February 6.
A State Department official confirmed the layoffs, saying: "We are extremely grateful for the service of each and every one of these individuals and hope to work with them at some point in the future when we can safely resume operations in Yemen."
The US ambassador has been working out of the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah.
Mr Tueller said the workers would get full severance payments and encouraged them to re-apply for jobs when the embassy reopened.
A Saudi-led coalition intervened in the war in March 2015 in a bid to restore Yemeni president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi's government to power, but the Iran-backed Houthi rebels still control the capital, Sanaa, and large areas of northern Yemen.
The US is supporting the coalition by providing intelligence and weapons, and fighting Al Qaeda militants in the south, mostly with drone strikes and sometimes commando raids.
The United Nations said in 2016 that the war had killed an estimated 10,000 people, displaced more than two million and pushed the country to the verge of famine. No new casualty figures have been released since.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The Bio
Hometown: Bogota, Colombia
Favourite place to relax in UAE: the desert around Al Mleiha in Sharjah or the eastern mangroves in Abu Dhabi
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Favourite documentary: Chasing Coral by Jeff Orlowski. It's a good reality check about one of the most valued ecosystems for humanity
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