Hi, this is Michelle, bringing you our last newsletter of the year before we’re back on 5 January. While eyes were on Washington DC this week as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his first foreign trip since war broke out, we turned our attention to a new office in Geneva, set up in March by the ICRC to help loved ones on both sides of the conflict keep in touch, amid the chaos.
As the news cycle winds down, we take our leave with a question raised by campaigners who stopped by Geneva last week, just as the UN rights chief focused his own attention on Nicaragua. What will the Human Rights Council do about ongoing abuses in the country? |
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Tracking down those missing in action
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Olga Masia, working the phone lines at ICRC's Central Tracing Agency office focussing on the war in Ukraine. (Peter Kenny/Geneva Solutions)
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Imagine if your son or husband disappeared while fighting Russian invaders, or your conscripted son or husband was lost in a battle he was sent to fight in Ukraine. Who would you turn to?
Especially during the holiday season when families would like to unite, it might be the Central Tracing Agency (CTA), a division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) specialised in tracking down people missing during conflict. For in times of war, the words a family most fears about their loved one in conflict after a death announcement is “missing in action”, evoking the lingering fear, where is my son or daughter?
Set up soon after the 2022 conflict began, a new division of the CTA was launched in March 2022 in a building not far from the lakeside in Geneva. There, the CTA Bureau for the International Armed Conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine employs nearly 100 people of 22 different nationalities, who beaver away quietly with headphone sets, computers and archives.
Read the full story on Geneva Solutions
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