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Trace a Family Member

International Family Tracing Services

 Armed conflict and natural disasters leave millions of people around the globe in urgent need of humanitarian assistance every year.  Red Cross Tracing Services and Red Cross Messages help families locate each other, send communications, and learn each other’s fate. Although tracing loved ones can take a long time, families need closure.
                        
Tracing assistance is provided to people in the community who have been separated from their relatives (citizens of other countries) as a result of war, civil disturbances, natural disaster, or changing world conditions over which the individual has no control. Tracing services for victims of war have their foundation in the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols.
 
Red Cross Messages are written messages sent between prisoners of war and their relatives through Red Cross channels, usually when no other communication is possible. Red Cross Message service may also be available to civilian victims of war, especially when postal
services have completely collapsed.
 
International Disaster Welfare Inquiries are health and welfare inquiries sent to alleviate distress when normal direct communication between family members is disrupted and attempts to reestablish contact between a person in the United States and a close relative who is a citizen of another country have failed.
 
International Humanitarian Law is the body of laws and principles that seeks to save lives and alleviate suffering of combatants and noncombatants during armed conflicts. Its principal legal documents are the Geneva Conventions of 1949, four treaties signed by almost all states (nations) around the world. The Geneva Conventions specifically protect members of the armed forces who are wounded, sick or shipwrecked, prisoners of war, and civilians. (Also sometimes referred to as "the law of armed conflict" or the "law of war.")

Holocaust Tracing Program is part of our tracing services.   Established by the Red Cross,  the Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center is a national clearing house for United States residents seeking the fates of loved ones missing since World War II and its aftermath.  If you are one of these survivors, the American Red Cross can help.  
 
All of our tracing services are confidential and free of charge.

To begin your search, call our International Social Services office at 713-313-1635.

Red Cross Messages Link Families a World-apart

Abdelrhaman Ibrahem (left) and Yahya Abdelkarim (right) are refugees from Darfur, Sudan that have been separated from their families for over twenty years. In 1988 they each traveled from their villages to Nyala to buy and trade goods; however when they tried to return home they found the roads were blocked by Janjaweed militia. Both men turned and fled to Khartoum and then to Iraq for safety. The men were living in Iraq when the war started in 2003 and again had to flee, they ended up in Al Anbar desert for 6 years when they were discovered and assisted by the US Marines. In the summer of 2009 they and 139 other Darfurians were resettled in the United States by the US government. Abdelrhaman and Abdelkarim had not been able to communicate with their families since 1988, both had assumed their families had been killed in the fighting in Darfur. In spring 2010 each of them received responses to the Red Cross Messages they had reluctantly sent, their families were alive! Families of each of the men are living in internally displaced persons camps near Nyala in Southern Darfur. Abdelrhaman received news from his children, he found out he even has grandchildren now! Abdelkarim has been able to reconnect with his mother and siblings. Both men are now able to communicate with their families over the telephone and are eagerly awaiting more messages with photographs of their families.
 
American Red Cross International Services is able to assist families that have been separated by war or conflict locate one another and re-establish communications.