GENEVA: More than a quarter of a million people are registered as missing by the Red Cross, a figure up nearly 70 percent over five years, the organization said on Friday.
The increase is being driven by growing numbers of conflicts, mass migration and fading respect for the rules of war, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement.
“From Sudan to Ukraine, from Syria to Colombia, the trend is clear: the surging number of missing persons provides a stark reminder that conflict parties and those who support them are failing to protect people during war,” said ICRC director-general Pierre Krahenbuhl.
Some 284,400 people were registered as missing by the ICRC’s Family Links Network at the end of 2024, an increase of 68 percent since 2019, according to numbers released on Friday.
But Krahenbuhl cautioned that that figure represents “only the tip of the iceberg.”
