TNAG-1546-FCO40-2110-International-Committee-of-the-Red-Cross-(ICRC)-proposal-to--1986 — Page 27

THE CENTRAL TRACING AGENGY

The tasks of the Central Tracing Agency (CTA) are:

obtaining, centralizing and communicating infor- mation on civilian and military victims of war, both living and dead, who may be in enemy hands (prisoners of war, interned civilians, people reported missing, etc.);

ensuring the forwarding of correspondence between prisoners and their families, as well as maintaining contact, through the mail or Red Cross messages (RCMs), between non-interned civilians and their relatives from whom they have been separated;

responding to tracing requests and undertaking the necessary investigations;

organizing family reunifications, transfers and repatriations;

issuing certificates of captivity, sickness or death;

issuing ICRC travel documents for refugees, dis- placed persons and stateless persons who have no proper identification papers, to enable them to go back to their own country or to the one where they

normally reside, or to any other country of their choice willing to receive them.

In 1985, 1,713,332 Red Cross messages were exchanged through the CTA, 1,565,774 of these relating to the conflict between Iraq and Iran;

27,506 tracing requests were received concerning people reported missing or about whom no word had been received by their next of kin or other rela- tives as a result of conflicts, internal disturbances and their after-effects; the fate of 7,249 of these missing persons was ascertained;

4,957 transfers (from one zone to another within the borders of the same country) were carried out;

617 repatriations (crossing a border to return to a country) took place;

831 family reunifications were organized;

the CTA issued 11,027 certificates and handled 4,533 requests of one kind or another.

In order to fulfil successfully its tasks, the CTA received and dealt with 401,327 items of informa- tion about victims in 1985 (capture cards, registra- tion cards, lists, etc.).

Searching for relatives: information must be as precise as possible (Luc Chessex)

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