Inside Geneva: Day of the Disappeared

For more than 150 years the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been working to reunite families separated by war and natural disaster. Inside Geneva visits the organisation’s Central Tracing Agency (CTA).

Florence Anselmo, head of the CTA, speaks about the problems her agency tries to solve: “people going missing, families becoming separated, families not knowing what has happened to their loved ones.”

Currently the agency is busy working with Russian and Ukrainian families, trying to update them on what has happened to their sons who have been fighting in the war.

But it also works with more historical cases, and it keeps its records forever.

“A grandchild of someone who was in the Second World War, you would be able to find information on your grandfather: when he was captured, where he was held, and what happened to him,” says the CTA’s Jelena Milosevic Lepotic.

Families will always need to know. As Florence Anselmo says, “families don’t stop searching. The need to know crosses generations. If parents don’t have answers then their children will look for answers and their grandchildren will look for answers.”

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