Britain needs to overhaul its response to terrorism abroad with many victims feeling abandoned and forced to wait months for treatment for the traumatic effects of attacks, a study found on Wednesday.
The first nationwide survey of victims of terrorism found that nearly half of people caught up in overseas incidents believed that the response from the UK government had been poor, according to Survivors Against Terror, a group that represents victims.
The report’s authors cited the response of the Foreign Office to the ISIS attack on a hotel in Sousse, Tunisia in 2015 when a solitary gunman killed 38 people, including 30 Britons.
The universal view among survivors of the Sousse attack was that the Foreign Office was “not capable and was not competent”, said Brendan Cox, whose MP wife was murdered by a right-wing extremist in 2016. Some families had been incorrectly told by officials that their relatives had survived, he said.
One anonymous victim said in the survey that they had been on the beach with a friend who was killed. “I had to identify her at the mortuary that day,” the witness said. “As I wasn’t physically hurt, I felt as though I didn’t matter. It took nearly a year before I got any help for post-traumatic stress disorder.”
The report said that victims were also struggling to get treatment to cope with the aftermath of terrorist attacks. There was also widespread disquiet over the lack of financial support and legal backing to pursue claims for compensation.
The group said that one mother was forced to reveal her daughter’s plight on television to get help. Other children had harmed themselves during months-long waits for mental health care.
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The group, which carried out a survey of about 270 people, concluded that victims were “routinely let down” by the agencies who were supposed to help.
“This survey has unearthed shocking stories that seem increasingly like the norm - survivors forced to pay for their own treatment, children denied help ending up harming themselves and long waiting lists for people who urgently need support,” said the group’s chair Charlotte Dixon Sutcliffe.
The survey found that three quarters of those people questioned wanted a dramatic improvement in mental health services.
Travis Frain, who was injured in one of the terrorist attacks last year when he was knocked down by an extremist in a vehicle on Westminster Bridge in London, had to wait nearly three months for an appointment with Britain’s health service.
The delays came despite pleas for swifter treatment from specialist advisers and his doctor. When he finally got an appointment, he was told by a specialist to drink a warm glass of milk to help him sleep better.
The group is due to hand over details of the survey to UK prime minister Theresa May on Wednesday to highlight the problems after five terrorist attacks in the UK last year, which left 36 people dead and hundreds wounded.
“The death or serious injury of a loved one is hugely distressing, and our staff across the globe work with dedication and empathy to support British nationals,” said the Foreign Office in a statement.
“We have over 750 consular staff in 268 locations around the world and in 2017 they assisted British nationals in over 30,000 cases, with nearly 4,000 of those cases being deaths abroad.”
The report came as the Foreign Office came under pressure to do more to secure compensation from Libya for victims of explosives and other weaponry supplied to Irish dissident groups by the regime of Muammar Qaddafi.
The Qaddafi regime from the early 1970s to the 1990s supplied the Irish Republican Army with guns, ammunition and up to 10 tonnes of the Semtex explosive that was used in a bombing campaign from the late 1980s in the UK.
The UK government has refused to step in to take over compensation claims on behalf of families of the dead and injured in those attacks. It said the continued political division of Libya and the fact that £12 billion (Dh56.3bn) of Libyan assets were frozen in UK banks made it hard to resolve the case.
MPs on the Northern Ireland committee on Tuesday accused the government of “treading water” over the claims.
Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt said: “It’s not a box-ticking exercise … on the other hand it’s not producing the speed of answer that anyone would have wanted in the circumstances.”
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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.”
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