Restoring Family Links

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.

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.

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Wikipedia