Charity intensifies search for missing abductees

A leading UK-based international children's charity on Wednesday said it had begun to intensify its efforts to search for thousands of civilians abducted from their homes in southern Sudan since 1983 and taken to the north of the country. The organisation, Save the Children, said its representatives had this week met local leaders, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other stakeholders in northern Bahr al-Ghazal, to "discuss the best way" to trace, return and reunify the civilians who were separated from their families in the course of hostilities. The names of such people would be distributed to local leaders for follow-up and further verification, additions or corrections, it said in a statement. These names have been listed in "Ten Thousand Names", a database released last month by the independent Rift Valley Institute following an 18-month study; it contains the names of 11,105 people abducted between 1983 and 2002. According to the study, 58 percent of the missing were children under 18 at the time of their abductions. Wendy Fenton, Save the Children's programme director in Sudan, said the research had helped her agency to "know who's missing and when they were taken". "This is a unique opportunity to sit together, discuss approaches and map the way forward. Families should know where their loved ones are and what has happened to them," she said in the statement. Abductions of southern Sudanese civilians in the course of the country's 20-year civil war have largely been blamed on government-backed tribal militias. In response to such claims, the Khartoum government set up the Committee for the Eradication of the Abduction of Women and Children in May 1999 to investigate abduction claims, help find affected children and women and facilitate their reunification with their families. The recent relative peace witnessed in the region following a formal cessation of hostilities between the government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army concluded in October 2002, had led to a lull in fresh abductions, and to an environment conducive to tracing more abductees and reuniting them with their families, the agency said. Hundreds of abductees have since been traced and reunited with their families. The most recent family reunifications took place in mid-May, when UNICEF and Save the Children flew 62 women and children across the ceasefire lines to their families in parts of northern Bahr al-Ghazal, the statement said. "The priority is to find children and to reunify them with close family members wherever they may be. Working closely with authorities on both sides of the conflict in a painstaking and methodical way provides the best chance for genuine and lasting returns, with the rights of the abducted respected," Fenton added. UNICEF last month urged the Sudanese government and international donors to use the latest research on missing people in Sudan as an opportunity to resolve the issue.