Red Cross helps to reunite families

Peace in Angola has also brought with it a deep need for people to find family members, perhaps a father or child, who went missing during the long war.

To help these families, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has also established a number of tracing centres throughout the country to help reunite loved ones.

Since the 4 April ceasefire, which security analysts say is being propelled by a genuine will to make it succeed, between three and four million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) have been identified in the vast country. These are people who hurriedly left their homes to escape the fierce clashes between the rebel UNITA forces and the Angolan army.

At least 85,000 soldiers - 35,000 more than expected - and 250,000 of their family members have entered quartering and family areas to wait for instructions on their demobilisation.

Since the ceasefire the number of people trying to trace lost relatives had risen by over 100 percent, Caspar Landolt, communications delegate for the ICRC in Angola told IRIN.

In the first half of 2002, over 480 families had opened tracing requests and about 280 unaccompanied minors were registered by the ICRC.

The children were currently either in orphanages or in the family resettlement areas.

Over 8,300 Red Cross messages were distributed in the different provinces in Angola, including in formerly inaccessible areas.

In the last four months 19 children had been reunited with their families, Landolt said.

The only condition for registering with the tracing centre was that the missing person should have disappeared during the conflict.

The centres are manned by ICRC employees or Angolan Red Cross volunteers. The search is conducted through word of mouth, with traditional leaders, local authorities and local administrators and is backed up with software and digital cameras. Recently, permission was obtained to conduct tracing activities in the quartering and family areas.

The organisation does not charge for the service.

Landolt said the reunions were emotional affairs, a reunion last week of a child with his family had reduced four hardened international television reporters to tears.

The contact number for families needing to reach the tracing centre in Angola is: +244-2-264454.

Besides tracing work, the ICRC has also made regular food distributions to 38,000 beneficiaries in the Cruzeiro and Caala camps for IDPs in Huambo. A statement said the same number of people were also given seeds to help them attain self-sufficiency.

In Chilembo the organisation distributed emergency food rations to 8,300 people and provided 20,000 IDP families, mainly in Bie and Huambo provinces, with non-food items, through the Angolan Red Cross.

Other work included giving Medecins Sans Frontieres-France food for the therapeutic feeding centre in Caala, tarpaulins to enlarge the centre, and a large number of buckets, jerrycans and emergency food rations for distribution in Bunjei.

The organisation had also continued well and spring protection projects for 12,000 people in Kuito, set up emergency sanitation programmes for 28,000 people and distributed soap to 280,000 IDPs in Kuito and Huambo, through the Angolan Red Cross.

The aid agency had also helped support the surgical and paediatric wards of the Huambo Hospital and supported the maintenance of the water and sewerage system.

Helping war-wounded amputees and manufacturing prostheses is included in the ICRC's programmes, for which it launched an appeal of US $18.8 million. It has so far received US $7.2 million.

For more details: http://www.icrc.org/eng