LAW & POLICY NEWSLETTER | INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE DISAPPEARED 2023 

Restoring family links: the role of the Central Tracing Agency 

This International Day of the Disappeared (IDOD), we stand with families of missing persons to express our solidarity and commemorate their missing relatives. 

For the past 150 years, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)’s Central Tracing Agency (CTA) has been helping people who are separated from their loved ones. Together with the Red Cross and Red Crescent Family Links Network, we are at the heart of efforts around the globe to protect and restore family links, search for and identify missing people, protect the dignity of the dead, and address the needs of families of missing people.

“The environment is changing, posing new challenges. What doesn’t change is that war, violence, natural disasters, and displacement continue to separate families and that their suffering is immense. And that in crisis the first need they express is to restore contact with loved ones.”

- Florence Anselmo, Head of CTA, ICRC

📸 Snapshot 2022

Every minute, we help more than 4 separated families call each other. Every hour, we help clarify the fate or whereabouts of 1 missing person. Every day, we facilitate the reunification of 13 people with their families

💡 IDOD Spotlight

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are missing or separated from their families due to armed conflict or other situations of violence, disasters, or migration. Can you imagine what that looks like?

No Trace of You campaign
The ICRC and National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Europe launched an online campaign #NoTraceOfYou with the aim to raise public awareness of a largely unreported tragedy: migrants who go missing en route to Europe.

Inside Geneva: Day of the Disappeared
For more than 150 years the ICRC has been working to reunite families separated by war and natural disasters. Imogen Foulkes of Inside Geneva visits the organization’s CTA with this podcast episode.

📚 Law & Policy Reads

With regard to families of missing persons states typically apply either measures of reparation or measures of assistance. This article argues that the two forms can and should coexist. 

Read about the rules of international humanitarian law (IHL), notably on the ICRC’s CTA and National Information Bureau, relevant to protecting people affected by international armed conflicts.

Explore the key elements of how the law protects victims of enforced disappearance and other missing persons and how the ICRC contributes to the broader efforts to prevent and address enforced disappearances.

💬 Law & Policy Resources

Website | Missing Persons Global Response

Factsheet | Missing persons and their families

Online Casebook | The Missing and the Dead

Toolbox | National Mechanisms for Missing Persons 

📍 IHL in Action

Colombia, Agreements Accounting for Missing Persons and the Dead
During and after the armed conflict between Colombia and the FARC, agreements emerged to ensure an efficient search, identification, and delivery of the remains of persons deemed missing

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Identification of Missing Persons

Bosnia-Herzegovina, aided by the International Commission on Missing Persons and ICRC among other organizations, has put in place a set of measures and identified over 27,000 missing persons from the Bosnian War, fostering compliance with IHL.

Georgia, Clarifying the Fate of Missing Persons
In the aftermath of the conflict in the 1990s and 2008 in Georgia, the ICRC facilitated recovering the bodies of the dead, informing the next of kin, and returning to them the remains of their loved ones.

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