ICRC News 47 / 27.11.96RWANDA 1,000 CHILDREN ALREADY REUNITED WITH THEIR FAMILIES
Before some of the Rwandan refugees in Zaire returned home, among them were more than 19,800 unaccompanied children who had been identified but had not yet been able to rejoin one of their parents. Today, it is impossible to know what has become of many of these children, and there are certainly thousands of others, both in Zaire and in neighbouring countries, who became separated from their parents during the recent refugee movements.
In the short term, everything is being done to find rapid means of restoring contact (active tracing) between unaccompanied children and parents seeking lost children. Each child is registered and where possible, a Red Cross message is sent immediately to one of its relatives. The ICRC gives top priority to such messages in its distribution network, in the hope of finding one of the child's parents as quickly as possible.
This past week a further 4,000 unaccompanied children have been registered by ICRC teams. They have all been taken back to their home provinces, and 1,000 of them have already been reunited with their families.
Further information: Laura O'Mahony, ICRC Kigali, tel. ++250 72 781 Nina Winquist-Galbe, ICRC Gisenyi, tel. ++871 68 228 23 30
AFGHANISTAN MEDICAL AND FOOD AID ON ALL FRONTS
The ICRC decided to airlift 1,700 kg of medicines and other medical supplies into northern Afghanistan on Monday 25 November. The consignment is intended for hospitals in the Panjshir valley, one of the strongholds of the forces opposed to the Taliban administration.
The aircraft had to make two round trips between Gardez and the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, where the supplies are being loaded onto trucks and will be taken to the Panjshir valley by road. Medicines, sterile dressings and blood serum for transfusion will be distributed to several hospitals in the area. Midecins du monde and Pharmaciens sans frontihres are also involved in this operation.
On 24 November, a convoy which was scheduled to travel from Kabul to Gulbahar had to be cancelled because of heavy fighting about 20 km north of the capital, but the ICRC managed to evacuate many casualties on either side of the front line.
There are also humanitarian needs in the north-western province of Badghis as a result of the armed clashes there. An ambulance service has been set up in Qala-i-Nau to evacuate the wounded arriving from the front line, situated in the Murghab area. The ICRC is giving assistance to the town's 30-bed hospital and to the military hospital in Herat. Large numbers of displaced people are still streaming into Herat. Some 400 displaced families are already receiving food rations from the ICRC; blankets, plastic sheeting, candles and soap will be distributed to them on 30 November.
Further information: Joerg Stoecklin, ICRC Geneva, tel. ++4122 730 2906
New on the ICRC Public Server - http://www.icrc.org : - Update 96/8 on ICRC activities in Zaire, dated 22.11.96
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