Sudan/Chad: six families united again

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The six young men had been separated from their loved ones for more than two years. "When our colleagues in Chad discovered that these young people were separated from their families, we started trying to locate their relatives in Sudan with the help of the Sudanese Red Crescent Society," said Angela Cotroneo, who coordinates the ICRC's family reunification programme in Sudan. "After establishing contact with the families and making sure that the youths would be returning of their own free will, we organized their homecoming with the agreement of the Chadian and Sudanese authorities concerned." The young men travelled on an ICRC aircraft yesterday afternoon from Abéché to Algenena. Three of them have already rejoined their families. The others, accompanied by an ICRC delegate, are on their way to their families in other parts of Sudan. Part of the ICRC's humanitarian mandate consists in seeking to preserve and restore contact between family members separated from one another by armed conflict. Whenever possible, the ICRC organizes family reunifications with the agreement of all concerned. For further information, please contact: Jean-Luc Noverraz, ICRC Chad, tel: +235 66 20 10 05 or +235 22 52 03 16 Adil Sharif, ICRC Khartoum, tel: +249 1 83 476 464 or +249 912 137 764