International Day of the Disappeared 2024

State of emergency for relatives

Berlin, 30 August 2024


Many people around the world disappear without a trace – whether during armed conflicts in their home countries or when fleeing along migration routes. In Germany, too, thousands are suffering because they don’t know what has happened to their loved ones. To mark International Day of the Disappeared on 30 August, the German Red Cross (GRC) is drawing attention to its humanitarian mandate: “The GRC has been helping people to find missing family members for decades. The GRC Tracing Service finds answers to their pressing questions and provides certainty wherever possible. Last year alone, we received a total of more than 10,000 tracing and clarification of fate requests,” says GRC President Gerda Hasselfeldt.

The GRC Tracing Service works closely with the tracing services of the other 190 Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, particularly in the case of current tracing enquiries. This enables it to obtain information about the whereabouts of missing relatives worldwide and bring family members back into contact with each other.

In 2023, the GRC Tracing Service registered 2,629 new missing relatives as part of the international tracing programme (status: 1st half of 2024: 1,395). People seeking protection, especially those from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iraq and Somalia, have often lost contact with their relatives while fleeing. The GRC Tracing Service is always on hand to help those desperate to find their loved ones. It also supports separated relatives with questions about family reunification, providing 18,875 counselling sessions nationwide in 2023.

In addition, clarifying the fate of missing persons from the Second World War remains an important task: in 2023, 7,806 relatives contacted the GRC Tracing Service in connection with the Second World War, while the figure for the first half of 2024 was 3,987. In 43 per cent of cases, the GRC Tracing Service was able to provide information as to the fate of the missing persons.

“This information is of the utmost importance for families, even after many years, in order to gain redemptive certainty. The work of the Tracing Service as a core task of the GRC is both historically and currently of great relevance. This is emphasised not least by the numerous enquiries we still receive today,” says GRC President Hasselfeldt.

The GRC Tracing Service has been institutionally supported by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community (BMI) since 1953 – now over 70 years.

The press office will be happy to arrange interviews with the GRC President and the GRC Tracing Service.

Further information:

In order to raise public awareness of the phenomenon of “ambiguous loss”, the GRC Tracing Service has released the short film The Waiting Room (in German). The International Red Cross (ICRC) production highlights the emptiness and great suffering of families who know nothing about the whereabouts of a missing loved one and shows how the international Tracing Service network of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement supports them.

More information and online forms for tracing enquiries can be found at: www.drk-suchdienst.de

Electronic Presskit