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Restoring Family Links in Iraq

The war may be over, but the pain lingers for many Iraqi families. The consequences of three wars and economic sanctions have caused enormous suffering and despair for the Iraqi people.

In May 2003, representatives of more than 30 Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies met at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation office in Baghdad to coordinate their response to the pressing humanitarian needs of the Iraqi population. Susan Johnson, National Director, International Programs and Humanitarian Issues for the Canadian Red Cross participated in the meeting.

	Iraqi women making calls to their relatives at the Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad.

The challenges facing the country are mainly structural, with the lack of security still hampering basic services and humanitarian operations. Another major concern is reconnecting families. With the breakdown of telephone, television and transportation services—many Iraqis have been separated from their families and have little news from them.

What struck Ms. Johnson the most was seeing large groups of people line up at 6:00 a.m. in the ICRC parking lot in Baghdad. They withstood the heat and long line-ups simply because they wanted to make a two-minute call on the satellite phones to a relative. Many had heard about the vital service by word of mouth or radio.

Ms. Johnson participated in two field visits with an ICRC delegate seeking to reconnect families whose injured children had been evacuated to hospitals in Kuwait during the war. These families had no idea of the whereabouts or condition of their children.

An Iraqi man talks for the first time in a month to his 11 year-old son hospitalized in Kuwait.

“As we approached one of the homes, a large crowd greeted us,” said Ms. Johnson. “For more than a month this family had no news about their 14 and 11 year-old sons. Many tears of joy were shed as the father was able to make a satellite phone call to his sons in a Kuwaiti hospital.” The ICRC delegate also took a handwritten message to be delivered to the sons.

Other challenges lie ahead in terms of identifying those people killed during the war. In many cases, traditional forensic tools are unavailable. “One morgue that we visited had been looted, and the staff person wondered how he can do his job without having taken photos and fingerprints of the dead,” remarks Ms. Johnson.

The ICRC has set up a special tracing unit to help cope with the many cases of missing family members. For many Iraqis continuing to struggle with the lack of information about the whereabouts of their loved ones this service aims to provide answers to the questions that haunt them.