ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday that it recorded 618 new cases of missing persons in the first six months of this year.
“In Iraq, many people have gone missing in different rounds of conflicts, with countless still remaining unaccounted for. The ICRC has documented 618 new cases of missing persons from January - June 2024,” the ICRC said, commemorating the International Day of the Disappeared.
The organization called on “all authorities to enhance mechanisms and resources for this task, ensure respect for the deceased and provide families with the information and support they need for a resolution to their uncertainty.”
When a member of a family goes missing, they visit the ICRC, which opens a case and starts looking for them, Avin Yassin, head of ICRC Iraq’s media department, told Rudaw on Friday.
“So far, no place has provided us with details about the missing persons, but wars and conflicts have a tremendous impact on the number [of the missing],” she said.
The fate and whereabouts of 208 missing persons have been determined so far this year, according to the ICRC.
Last year, the ICRC recorded over 1,500 cases of missing persons and discovered the fate of 361 of them.
Some of the missing persons files date from Iraq’s wars with Kuwait and Iran.
“The ICRC supports authorities in the search for those who went missing or died during the Iraq-Iran and Iraq-Kuwait wars and their bodies have yet not been recovered and identified,” it stated.
In February, Iraq and Iran exchanged the remains of 45 individuals who had gone missing in the course of their eight-year-long war that saw the neighboring countries pitted against each other from 1980, the year after the birth of the Islamic Republic, to 1988.
Thousands of people who went missing under the Islamic State (ISIS) are also still missing.
When ISIS attacked Shingal in August 2014, the group committed genocide and abducted 6,417 Yazidi women and children, forcing them into sexual slavery and labor. So far, 3,581 have been rescued, Hussein Qaidi, head of the Office for Rescuing Abducted Yazidis, told Rudaw earlier this month.
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