Missing people remembered

Tuesday marks the International Day of the Disappeared. This year, the day is intended to highlight the difficulties faced by families waiting for news of absent loved ones.

Besides having to deal with the emotional trauma of not knowing what has happened to their relatives – many of whom disappeared during armed conflict - the International Committee of the Red Cross says complex bureaucracy often prevents them from moving on with their own lives.

"Even if they suspect that a family member is dead, relatives may not be able to mourn properly," said Olivier Dubois, the deputy head of the Central Tracing Agency and Protection Division of the ICRC. "Without proof of death, family members are unable to move on, sell property, or simply conduct funeral rites."

Colombian Search

Colombia is a case in point. After over four decades of conflict between rebel groups such as the Farc, drug cartels, and the Colombian army, more than 57,000 people are now officially listed as missing.

Sandra's husband Francisco was a soldier in the Colombian army. In October 2008 he came home on leave, but went missing shortly after returning to his unit.

Sandra believes he may have been taken hostage by rebel forces, but has no hard evidence to substantiate to her theory. For its part, the army has failed to provide her with any information that might help her establish her spouse's fate.

"I'm living in complete uncertainty," she says. "I hope he is alive and well somewhere but I just don't know."

That uncertainty is paralyzing. Guilhem Ravier, Protection Coordinator for the ICRC in Bogota, is trying to assist Sandra in her search for news, but knows her wait could be a very long and difficult one.

"The waiting kills," he explains, "the uncertainty kills. Once you have some news, even if it is bad news, you can start reconstructing your life but here there are many families living in limbo without any definitive answer."

Searching for children

Far from Bogota, in a small village in Colombia's Urabà province, another grieving family is going through the same thing. Julia and Elias have not seen their son Luis since December 2010, when he set off to work as usual.

They fear he may have been recruited into a rebel group, like so many other young men before him.

After nine months of no news, the army told Julia and Elias that Luis may have been killed in a clash with the army. But they could not provide any proof, and without that Julia and Elias have no body to bury, and no grave at which to mourn.

Bodies being discovered

For many relatives the search for a missing loved one will not end with good news.

Groups that have renounced conflict in Colombia are gradually revealing the sites of mass graves, and, at Bogota's National Institute of Forensic Medicine, staff are working round the clock on the grim process of identifying the bodies being brought in.

"The work is immense," explains institute director Carlos Eduardo Moreno. "Because of the conflict, the violence in our country, the number of registered missing is growing every day."

The institute has recently acquired new equipment, which will speed up fingerprint and DNA analysis and hopefully deliver information faster to families, but even this won't mean that every family gets a definitive answer.

"Some families will never know," says Guilhem Ravier. "Because for people who were effectively killed, missing people who were killed, we know that many bodies really disappeared and will never be recovered."

Closure for families

That might not be the case for Julia and Elias, who are summoned to the local morgue, where they are shown a photograph of the body of a young man.

The details of his death seem to fit with what they know about Luis, and Elias is convinced he recognizes his son in the photograph, but they will have to wait six months for a DNA test before they know for sure. If it is Luis, there will finally be a body to bury, which means his parents will be able to begin the process of mourning their son's death.

But for Sandra and her son Bryan, there is still nothing but the wide open expanse of waiting without knowing. It's a painful way for them to live.

"If I could just talk to him," Sandra said. "I would tell him how much I love him – he was my friend as well as my husband, we were together through good times and bad. I would do anything to get him back, I hope he's alive, but even if he's dead I want him back."

Reporter: Imogen Foulkes / tkw
Editor: Saroja Coelho