Red Crescent gets a barrage of requests to find missing people

Saudi Gazette report JEDDAH — The Saudi Red Crescent Authority (SRCA) has received 3,704 messages from different parts of the Kingdom, requesting help to locate missing family members following natural calamities or armed conflicts. “The authority conducts a variety of activities under its social responsibility program to locate people who have disappeared without trace and bring them back to their families,” an SRCA official told Al-Hayat Arabic daily. “We have received the largest number of messages and calls from Riyadh, Makkah and Hail regions, accounting for about 73 percent of all messages, followed by the Eastern Province with 12.5 percent,” he said. The program aims to bring together family members who went missing during armed conflicts, violence and natural calamities as part of a joint humanitarian response from the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movements. “We are doing this service out of respect for family unity, which goes well with our humanitarian role,” the official said. However, he pointed out that it was up to individuals to make use of this program to reestablish contacts with their loved ones or at least get information about their whereabouts. “The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement has been making strenuous efforts to restore family ties for several decades and hundreds of thousands of people across the world have benefited from this program,” the official pointed out. “It involves various services including exchange of news about missing family members, search for them and finally reunite them with their families by bringing them back to the Kingdom,” the official explained. Collection of information about the dead, management of such information, identification of places where bodies have been found, retrieving bodies and identifying them, and transfer of official documents such as birth certificates, passports and ID cards are among other services rendered by the organization. The authority facilitates issuance of travel documents, in addition to other support mechanisms after locating missing individuals, the official said. The SRCA has set out a strategy to establish a national network to reunite missing family members. This movement started from Riyadh and then it spread to other regions. Now 13 offices have been set up across the Kingdom for the purpose. The authority also works with Prince Naif Training and Rehabilitation Program to train workers in first aid services. It also runs a trainers training program.