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Liberia: Local Red Cross Takes Over Tracing Program
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The NEWS (Monrovia)
14 March 2008
Posted to the web 14 March 2008
Monrovia
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced on Thursday that it has completed its tracing program for Liberia of separated families within the sub-region of Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Ghana and Nigeria.
According to an ICRC release, more than 2,000 children were unified with their families since the beginning of the tracing program in 2001.
The peaceful situation in Liberia has been cited as reason for easing of ways of communications between separated families, which apparently has made the ICRC intervention less overwhelming.
"The ultimate tracing cases are being solved, and the ICRC has therefore accomplished this mandate", the release stated.
The Liberia National Red Cross Society has now been given the sole responsibility to address "new tracing request".
In reflections of the tracing program, the ICRC Protection Coordinator, Tine Vermeiren said, "On behalf of all the children we helped reunifying with their families, I want to thank the perseverance of the Red Cross National Societies, and all my colleagues involved in the tracing program. It had been a real team effort, and it could only work, thanks to the great communication between the ICRC delegations in the region and the vast network of Red Cross volunteers in our neighboring countries".
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Family members were separated within the sub-region and beyond during 14 years of civil war in Liberia which claimed the lives of an estimated 250,000 people.
An internationally brokered peace deal in Accra, Ghana, amongst Liberian warring factions in 2003 brought the civil war to an end, leading to a United Nations supervised national elections in 2005.
Liberia is now relatively stable and moving away from emergency to developmental programs.
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