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Angola: Thanks to red cross message, two sisters find each other after 25 years

12-10-2000 News Release 00/39

" Messages of hope " they may be, but for those who are anxious to receive one the wait can be agonizing. Searching for a missing relative is one of the cruellest ordeals of war.

Despite the difficulties of working in a country as vast as Angola (twice the size of France), where so many people have been displaced and some areas are off limits for security reasons, the ICRC has finally managed to reunite two sisters who lost touch with each other 25 years ago. 

Maria da Graça Palanca threw her arms up in the air several times, speechless with emotion. She had just read a message from her sister Maria-Margarida, from whom she was separated when she was only 18. Today she learned that Maria-Margarida, fleeing the violence that broke out in the country in 1975, had been able to fly to Norway and was still living there.

The ICRC processes tracing requests and collects and delivers red cross messages both in Angola and abroad, especially in neighbouring countries where many Angolans have sought refuge and where ICRC tracing teams are working in close collaboration with National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to help them find their missing relatives. A great number of messages are currently being distributed by the ICRC in Huambo, Lobito, Kuito and Luanda and by the Angolan Red Cross in other parts of the country.