GENEVA (AlertNet) - Tens of thousands of people around the world have gone missing as a result of armed conflicts, leaving families and friends to wait for years --often in vain -- for news of their fate.

At a conference organised last month by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, participants called called for more consideration for the needs of relatives, better identification mechanisms and stronger national and international laws to prevent disappearances.

"Families of missing persons need material, financial, psychological and legal support," the ICRC said in a statement issued during the conference.

"The phenomenon of missing persons occurs in almost every situation of armed conflict or internal violence," says a report by Sophie Martin, head of the Missing Persons Project of the ICRC.

Apart from soldiers missing in combat, the missing include hundreds of thousands of civilians who are abducted or lose touch with their families in times of turmoil.

Martin's report says: "The majority of missing persons (are) civilians who were separated from their families by the effects of war, or who disappeared while in detention or were killed in massacres and thrown into mass graves."

"There are probably millions of affected families, all over the world," said the ICRC.

"Many have been waiting for decades in the hope of finding out what happened to their missing relatives."

In Rwanda alone, at least 105, 000 people are unaccounted for, according to the ICRC. In former Yugoslavia, more than 22,000 people are missing, and in Peru more than 6,000.

There are missing people from dozens of other countries, including Angola, Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, El Salvador, Eritrea, Guatemala and Kuwait.

NO COMMON RULES

The ICRC says that its efforts -- and those of families of the missing -- to ensure that relatives know the fate of the disappeared are hampered by a lack of concern on the part of parties to conflicts, and insufficient understanding of the problem.

"There are no commonly agreed rules and best practices which, at times, results in a duplication of efforts," said the ICRC.

The conference brought together experts from governments and NGOs as well as representatives of families of the missing to discuss ways to make a difference for people who have no news of their missing relatives.

The conference was part of a process of years of work by the ICRC.

The ICRC said it wanted the issue to be higher on the agenda of governments, the United Nations and NGOs.

The Red Cross and Red Crescent movement has participated in numerous campaigns to support families of the missing and to reunite relatives separated during times of upheaval.

In Liberia, the ICRC and national Red Cross society have launched a poster campaign to find families of more than 1,000 unaccompanied children living as refugees in neighbouring countries.

Immediately after the bombing of a Bali night club in October 2002, the local Red Cross started identifying missing persons and contacting relatives.

The Red Cross has established centres in Kovoso and mobile outreach teams to strengthen family and community development by providing psychological support and therapeutic social activities.

In Sri Lanka, both the government and the separatist movement in the north of the country -- the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam -- have asked the ICRC to help set up an independent mechanism to verify cases of missing persons.

The ICRC and national Red Cross society of Democratic Republic of Congo last year helped more than 400 families torn apart by the conflict to be reunited with their children.

Florian Westphal, a media relations officer at the ICRC, told AlertNet he was motivated by his experience of seeing the ICRC help to bring relatives together, sometimes after years of separation.

After a volcano erupted in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, in January 2002, between 300 and 400 children were split up from their families, Westphal said. In a few days, Red Cross volunteers were on street corners, collecting information from people about children in temporary shelter. "It works. People picked up their kids having not known where they were for the last 10 days," he said.

FIRST PRIORITY

"Knowing what happened to the family is the first thing people want to know after a catastrophe. More than water or food. That comes after. It really is vital."

He said that the task of finding the missing in a country as large as Democratic Republic of Congo were daunting. "It's a country the size of half a continent. People just vanish."

Not having confirmation of a relative's fate leaves a permanent open emotional wound.

"I meet people whose relatives disappeared 20 years ago, and they are still convinced they are alive. There's no closure. There's no end to the process," Westphal said.

"They say: 'If I knew, I could get on with grieving. I could get on with my life.' People need to know what happened, they need some acknowledgement."

There are numerous legal complications when relatives have no proof of someone's death. Many women find that they are unable to claim inheritances, or receive land titles, claim custody, access a husband's pension, or remarry.

Women are disproportionately vulnerable to these problems, since in most conflicts the majority of combatants and individuals subject to detention or extra-judicial killings are men.

"Women are left in a situation where they have to earn all the money, often for the first time," said Westphal.

The conference invited panels to discuss a range of themes, such as exhumations and managing human remains, and identification of armed combatants.

It brought together people who would not necessarily normally come into contact -- families of the missing, medical professionals, humanitarian workers, human rights activists, military and political representatives.

Panel participants discussed exhumations, autopsies and identification, and said that only forensic experts should handle remains.

In many circumstances, information is compiled about an individual during his or her life, such as dental and medical records -- known as ante mortem data -- that can be useful in identification.

The ICRC called for standard protocols and software for collecting and using ante mortem and post mortem data. It said that this should be combined with guidelines for exhumations.

"Methods should be appropriate to the context," said the ICRC.

PUTTING FAMILIES FIRST

Westphal said that it was sometimes difficult to collect ante mortem data, if people were not accustomed to going to the doctor.

"It's not necessarily bad will. There's also a lack of information," he said.

There are often conflicting aims in forensic investigations. For example, the exhumation of a secret mass grave might have important legal implications, and the needs of the victims' families might not given priority.

Communities and families should be involved in exhumations, the conference said.

"There's no law on respect for human remains," said Westphal. "There's nothing to mention the right of families to know what happened. They're quite big gaps."

He said that relatives of the missing were gaining higher expectations.

"There is more and more pressure from families. They are more and more organised. They're not resigned to their fate -- they're vocal and outspoken," he said.

Westphal said that people were often unaware of international humanitarian law. "People don't have a clue that they have obligations and that obligations also mean protection," he said.

Sophie Martin told delegates: "The relevant state authorities, armed groups and leaders must take action, backed by national and international humanitarian and human rights organisations, to prevent people from going missing and to deal with the consequences when they do. For this, they can choose from a broad spectrum of measures involving persuasion, substitution, denunciation and judicial action.

"Whenever possible, constructive dialogue must be fostered between all parties -- including the families of missing persons and their communities. This is the only means of reducing the number of missing persons and of identifying appropriate measures to be taken in their favour and that of their relatives."

IDENTIFICATION

The ICRC argues that all combatants should carry identification, and invited military participants to address the conference on the subject.

A conference panel, involving military participants, concluded that all combatants should be supplied with identity cards, or at minimum should have identity tags.

The ICRC said that parties to a conflict should set up an information bureau to centralise information on the wounded, sick and shipwrecked as well as detainees and the dead. Information from the bureau should be passed on to authorities or families and to the Central Tracing Agency of the ICRC.

Another panel examined judicial mechanisms and ways to improve them.

Westphal said that the behaviour of donors was crucial in implementing changes proposed by the conference. "A lot of these suggestions will cost money," he said.

The "Observations and Recommendations" approved by the conference as well as the report of the "Working Group on the Observations and Recommendations" are available at http://www.icrc.org