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UNHCR calls on countries to stop repatriating Haitians

Red Cross offers advice on burying dead

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) -The International Red Cross (ICRC) opened a missing person’s site following the Haiti earthquake, Family Links, Wednesday evening 13 January. It has registered 14,000 messages in less than two days, says Robert Zmmerman, deputy head of the ICRC Central Tracing Agency and Protection Division in Geneva. The ICRC is working closely with the Haitian Red Cross Society, as well as several other national societies, to connect those who are missing, or knowledge of them, and their families.

At the moment there are”primarily two users,” Zimmerman told GenevaLunch. “People outside Haiti and those who are able to register, to make themselves known.” But he adds, this is obviously limiting as long as communication lines are down. Many people “won’t be able to register themselves so we have people, our colleagues, who are feeding in information about the injured” or dead as they find it – in hospitals and on the streets in Haiti. “This is being set up right now, on the spot, but we don’t have details yet for how this is going to go. We’re faced with the same communications problems with our own staff.”

People seeking information about persons missing in Haiti are advised to use the Family Links site. The list can be viewed publicly.

The ICRC has provided tracing services for much of its 150-year history, particularly since the second world war. The first Family Links web site was set up in 1995 during the Bosnia conflict. The greatest use of it was during Hurricane Katrina, when 200,000 messages were registered on the site, according to Zimmerman.

Swissinfo notes that the Haitian diaspora in Switzerland has come together quickly to help each other obtain information and reach family members. Haitians abroad, it reports, sent twice as much money home as international aid provided to the country, one of the world’s poorest, in 2008.

Resources should first go to find the living, not to burying the dead

The International Committee for the Red Cross is at the same time cautioning people not to rush to bury the dead, pointing out that the old notion that dead bodies spread disease is largely false, and that haste can make it impossible for families to find out what happened to missing relatives.

“Contrary to popular belief, dead bodies are a negligible health hazard. After a disaster, the top priority is to look after the living. Rushing to bury the dead diverts resources away from rescue efforts and can make it impossible to identify bodies later. Having said which, there is the question of dignity for the dead, and the sight and smell of dead bodies can be distressing. We therefore recommend moving all unidentified dead bodies to specially designated body collection areas once resources become available,” the ICRC web site counsels.

Let Haitians in other countries stay where they are, says the UNHCR

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, 15 January called on governments to follow the examples of the US, Canada and the Dominican Republic, with a temporary halt to deportations of Haitians.