Accounting for the Missing in Armed Conflict

Restoring family links has been at the heart of the ICRC's mandate since the organization's earliest days. ICRC researcher Cédric Cotter explains how the role of the ICRC Central Tracing Agency has evolved since the Basel Agency for the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. Dušan Vujašanin talks about the work and challenges of the most recent Central Tracing Agency Bureau he heads, which was set up in March 2022 for the Russia-Ukraine international armed conflict.

Families have the right to know what happened to their loved ones. They also have the right to see their family's life and unity preserved. Ximena Londoño, ICRC legal advisor, and Anastasia Kushleyko, strategy advisor at the CTA Bureau, explain what this means in practice, what the states concerned must do to ensure these rights are respected, and how the ICRC helps families to (re)connect and, where possible, exchange news. They also speak of the excruciating suffering of families waiting for news.

When people are killed in armed conflict, the states concerned must ensure that their bodies are identified and handed over to their families as soon as possible. This is not only a legal obligation that they must comply with, it is also a humanitarian endeavor and a fundamental human value. Helen Obregon, ICRC legal advisor, and Carlos Villalobos, CTA-Bureau's forensic manager, discuss the Geneva Conventions' provisions relating to the dead, preventive measures that can be taken to ensure identification, and challenges that arise when hostilities prevent access to the battlefield.

The Geneva Conventions require all states to prevent people from going missing and to search for those who do. Jose Serralvo, ICRC legal advisor, details these obligations. He is joined by Jérôme Cassou, data manager at the ICRC CTA Bureau for the international armed conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, who talks about the practical ways the huge volume of information gathered by the ICRC is handled and processed to provide families with answers as quickly as possible.

States parties to an international armed conflict have an unconditional obligation to account for enemy soldiers and civilians in their hands, whether alive, wounded or dead. They must in particular set up National Information Bureaus (NIBs) to collect information about them and share it with the ICRC. ICRC Karen Loehner and Benjamin Charlier accompanied the setting up of the Ukrainian and Russian NIBs. They underline the importance of peacetime preparedness, and the role that third countries such as Switzerland can play.