Afghanistan – restoring family links (part 2)

Throughout the years of conflict in Afghanistan thousands of family members have been displaced and many have lost touch with their relatives. In the worst cases, family members have been killed in the fighting and sometimes their final resting place is unknown to their loved ones.

In other cases, families have been separated and one or more family members are missing. Equally, people detained as a result of the conflict are not always able to advise their families of their fate.

The work of tracing the missing and, if possible, of restoring family links is one of ICRC's protection activities. International law related to armed conflict provides obligations on parties to a conflict to ensure that families are able to find out the fate of their relatives – and the ICRC works to ensure that these obligations are met.

Golareh Yazdanpanah has worked in the tracing department of the ICRC delegation in Kabul for nearly eight months. From Iran originally, where she still has many family members, she was educated in Neuchatel in Switzerland.

"I remembered seeing young Afghan refugees in Iran when I was younger and once I asked a boy at the bazaar why he was not at school? He told me he was Afghan – and since then I have wanted to help these people. I was very happy when the ICRC decided to send me to Afghanistan to work," she explains.

Golareh's duties in Kabul have included working to maintain a database for detainees in Afghanistan, assisting with the distribution of some 8,000 Red Cross messages (mainly between detainees and their families in Afghanistan, but also between family members in other parts of the world), and occasionally acting as an interpreter and detention delegate for female detainees.

When asked about the highlights of her work, Golareh spoke of two things.

"A boy originally from Afghanistan was in Iran. His family had left Afghanistan and were living as refugees in Finland and they were trying to find the location of their son. Eventually the boy was located in Iran and brought back to Afghanistan by the ICRC, where another organization arranged his reunion with his family in Finland. Seeing the ICRC's contribution to this reunion was a wonderful thing for me."

Golareh has also been pleased to use her language skills.

"Because I speak Farsi it makes this work more interesting for me when I speak to detainees or families who have missing relatives. One detainee that I spoke with had not heard from his family in nearly one year and we were able to locate the family and arrange for a message to be delivered to his brother. These are pleasing times when you bring families back together."