Geneva (ICRC) - The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement has adopted a 10-year strategy aimed at strengthening help for families separated by armed conflict, natural disaster or cross-border migration to restore contact with their loved ones. The decision was taken by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the 186 National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies at a meeting in Geneva.

The separation of families is one of the most painful consequences of armed conflicts, natural disaster and migration. Hundreds of thousands of people have recently become separated from their relatives because of catastrophes such as the South Asia earthquake, floods in Central America and armed conflicts such as those in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia.

"In times of crisis, people turn to their families," says Pierre Krähenbühl, director of operations at the ICRC. "Families are the key coping mechanism for most people. By strengthening its global Family Links Network, the Movement can make a real difference in people's lives."

The new strategy has three main objectives: to improve the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement's effectiveness in restoring family links, to enhance coordination and cooperation within the Movement, and to strengthen support for family-links work. The Movement will also bring the strategy to the attention of governments to ensure that they understand their role and responsibilities in the process of putting people back in touch with loved ones.

The Movement's Family Links Network can help distraught families discover the whereabouts of their relatives, including in cases where they have been arrested, and allows them to exchange brief personal messages ("Red Cross messages"). The Network also works to reunite unaccompanied children with their families. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, more than 640 families were reunited in this way in 2006. Asende, today a 12-year old boy, was separated from his family along with his elder sister when fighting broke out in their village in 1999. In 2006, a Red Cross volunteer brought a message from Asende to his grandfather to say that he was well and that he wanted to come home: ''It was only then that I knew that my grandson was alive", said the old man. "It was like a miracle."

In 2006, the ICRC together with National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies around the world delivered and collected over 630,000 Red Cross messages and established the whereabouts of some 11,500 people separated from their loved ones. In the same period, the ICRC reunited more than 1,000 separated children with their families.