Restoring Family Links (RFL) is a program of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, more specifically the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies involving activities that aim to prevent separation and disappearance, look for missing persons, restore and maintain contact between family members and clarify the fate of persons reported missing. The activities are carried out by the components of the RFL is sometimes also referred to as family tracing.
The ICRC and National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies form together a global network, the Family Links Network. This network works across international borders, present with staff and volunteers at grass-roots level worldwide, to locate people and put them back into contact with their relatives, observing of the principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
The most common situations where the Family Links Network takes action are when loss of contact is due to armed conflict or other situations of violence; natural or man-made disaster; migration and in other situations of humanitarian need, such as allowing detainees to keep in touch with their families while in prison. RFL services are free of charge.
History
The ICRC's work to restore family links goes back to 1870 and the Franco-Prussian War. The institution obtained lists of French prisoners held by German forces, which were used to inform families about the fate and whereabouts of the soldiers.
Even before, at the very origin of the Red Cross, the Movement's founder, Henry Dunant, wrote of taking a message from dying soldier Claudius Mazuet to his parents in A Memory of Solferino.
A similar effort was undertaken in the Balkans in 1912. Here the ICRC set up an agency to help families send packages to family members held prisoners.
During the First World War, in accordance with the mandate it had received from the 4th International Conference of the Red Cross in 1887, the ICRC set up the International Agency of Prisoners of War. By the end of the war it had handled over 7 million records.
During the Second World War the ICRC created the Central Prisoners of War Agency, now the Central Tracing Agency in Geneva. The Agency gathered and recorded data received from governments about prisoners of war. The information was used to respond to enquiries from families who were looking for news about their loved ones. By the end of 1946, the Agency had received and forwarded more than twenty million letters and cards addressed to prisoners of war and interned civilians.
Since then, tracing people separated by conflict, disaster and migration has become a core element of the Red Cross and Red Crescent work. In 2012, the ICRC together with the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies handled more than 279,000 family messages, facilitated 227,500 phone calls, registered over 3,500 separated children and reunited more than 2,300 children with their families.
About
Depending on the context, Restoring Family Links services include the following:
looking for individuals on behalf of their family; restoring and maintaining family contact; registering and keeping track of individuals so as to prevent their disappearance and to inform their families of their whereabouts; reuniting and repatriating family members; helping the authorities clarify what has happened to persons unaccounted for; collecting, managing and forwarding information on the dead.
Services are offered under thorough guidelines described in manuals for caseworkers and other volunteers and staff. Availability depends on global and local conditions, and may change in keeping with current events.
The Family Links website familylinks.icrc.org, managed by the ICRC in cooperation with National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, describes the locally available Restoring Family Links services in more than 150 countries and provides contact details of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in each country.
Looking for family members
Looking for missing persons usually involves several steps, starting with a person putting forward a request (Tracing Request) to a National Society or the ICRC. The Tracing Request gathers information which might be helpful to find the sought person, and is often obtained via a personal interview with the enquirer. The information in the request is compared to various data depending on the situation, such as lists of persons detained, lists of persons registered as receiving, or having received, treatment in hospital, information received where there is a telephone hotline, lists of dead or people who are safe and well.