You're reading: ICRC registers more than 600 cases of missing people during Donbas conflict

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said that three years after the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, several thousand people are still missing, although the exact number is not known, but more than 600 registered by ICRC cases remain undisclosed.

“Over 600 cases of missing persons registered with the ICRC remain unsolved. The vast majority of them are for men. And around half the overall ICRC caseload since the beginning of the conflict concerns civilians who have disappeared,” the press service of the ICRC said on Wednesday.

Based on research carried out by the ICRC in 2016, it became clear that people searching for missing loved ones want psychological and psychosocial support. In response, in October 2016, the ICRC started an ‘accompaniment’ program for a small number of families and plans to expand it this year.

Furthermore, ICRC forensics experts are also providing training, technical and material support for the exhumation, examination and identification of human remains, working with search and recovery teams, police authorities and forensic experts.

“Our services are there for everyone seeking contact with, or news about, relatives who are missing or from whom they are separated. Together with local Red Cross branches, ICRC teams are actively assisting families who are looking for a missing person. People have the right to know what has happened to their loved ones,” the ICRC press service quotes ICRC delegation head to Ukraine Alain Aeschlimann as saying.