In collaboration with the Liberian National Red Cross Society (LNRCS) the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) recently launched a massive poster campaign in a bid to reunite some 1,000 Liberian refugee children separated from their parents by the conflicts in Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire. Having registered and photographed the children, ICRC hopes to find their parents or families in Liberia, it said in a press release on Wednesday. Hundreds of such pictures were now displayed on large posters in 115 places in Liberia - camps for displaced persons, host communities, markets, schools and hospitals, ICRC said. Relatives who recognised a child on a poster could contact the nearest LNRCS volunteer or ICRC. Once the family relationship was verified on a computer database, relatives could write Red Cross messages to their children in Sierra Leone or Guinea, and if both sides agreed the ICRC could reunite the children with their families in Liberia. A phone system top help families get back in touch was set up in December in Guinea's southeastern Nonah camp near Nzerekore for some 1,400 refugees from Cote d'Ivoire. More than 50 families were contacted by relatives in the camp - a successful operation that would continue, ICRC said.
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