 According to the International Committee of the Red Cross ICRC, nearly 45,000 people are currently declared missing across Africa. Nigeria accounts for more than half of the total number of missing persons in Africa, with some 24,000 people registered as missing. Other countries with high numbers of disappeared people, some include Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia, Libya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, even Cameroon. Joining us to discuss these numbers, and of course the issue of missing persons, is Aliyu Dawab. He is the Communication Specialist International Committee of Red Cross. Thank you very much Mr. Dawab for joining us. Thank you very much and good evening. Great. For a lot of people, they're wondering, really, is there a day that people really observe missing persons? Because, really, it probably wouldn't have become an issue if not for the fact that people are hearing this, but this is news to some people. But when you talk about missing persons, who qualifies as a missing person or someone who's disappeared? Thank you for inviting me into your program. I don't think there is any qualification for one to be qualified as missing, rather than the family of this person coming to the ICRC, coming to the Red Cross, to certify that they have had a family member that is missing, and registering him to be looked after, so that they can be reunited. So for us in the ICRC, a missing person is someone whose family came to us and declared him missing, and then they want the organization to give support in terms of reuniting them. This, I think, is the qualification of someone who is missing. Well, not talking about warthorne countries or unrest and pockets of violence or crisis in certain parts of the world, we know that it can be a very daunting situation to try to explain to the average person why there are so many disappeared persons. Because sometimes these people might be abducted, some of them might have been killed, and some of them just wander away. So according to statistics, like I said at the opening of this show, 57% of these disappeared persons are children. And I want to understand how these people can be accounted for, especially in cases where there are invasions or abductions or war. How do you account for them? I mean, you said that people can come to the ICRC, and that's for people who know. But what about those who do not have the ICRC to go to, or people who don't even have the knowledge that they should be telling someone about the fact that a family member is missing? Thank you. This is actually an interesting question that you have asked. First, talk about people who disappeared. The mandate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ICRC, and also National Red Cross, and in this case we talk about the Nigerian Red Cross Society, is to support and assist people that are affected by armed conflict and violence. Many times when we are working, a lot of people, a lot of organizations just feel that assisting people with emergency assistance, food, water, shelter, I mean temporary shelter, and the rest of them are the basic needs. But a lot of people undermine the fact that people get missing and the trauma the families pass through in trying to think about these loved ones that they have missed over the years, over the months is something that really goes a lot into them. So disappearing in conflict is something that has always been common. In conflict situations, the first thing that people think about is get into safety. And because of getting into safety, you find out that your family member has been left behind. This leaving behind of a family member can be, of course, out of fear. This is one of the aspects of people that can lead to people to get separated. The number two aspect can be people getting arrested because of conflict. Of course, during conflict, a lot of people get arrested by security forces. A lot of people get arrested by the armed groups and so on and so forth. So these people that are arrested, sometimes the family members do not know where they are. And the family members need to have answers where the families are. So this is another layer of what? Of disappearance in conflict situations. The other one, unfortunately, is when people get killed or died while in separation, either because they have been killed because of the conflict, or they have been killed because of so many reasons in conflict situations. So these are layers that can make people to disappear. So our role here is to try to see how we can follow up on all these layers. If people are dead, then we should be able to work closely with our forensic experts if there are organized burials. If there are no organized burials, unfortunately, this is something that is very, very complicated. But if there are organized burials, even if it is a mass burial, and people are organized and numbered and photographed based on where they are situated, then this is really going to help for people to know, okay, this is a loft relative that has died because of the conflict and this is the place where he was buried. At least the families will have that. In terms of arrest, our organization does a lot of what we call detention visits, visiting people in detention areas. Like I said, when conflict happens, a lot of people get arrested. And when they get arrested, they are imprisoned in various detention facilities. They have, yes, of course, they have been arrested by security forces. The security forces have the right to prosecute these people. But while they are in detention, they have their own rights. They have the right to life. They have the right to be prosecuted. They have the right for the family members to know where they are located, and so on and so on and so on. They have all these rights. The ICRC is not going into detention areas to tell people, hey, why are you arresting this person? No. But to make sure that the standard of the international humanitarian law is respected in the cause of treating people that are affected during conflict. So these are situations. Sometimes we have short separations. So short separations can mean people separated for a few months, a few weeks, a few days sometimes. This is something very common in the north central states of Nigeria, where we have conflict between farmers and herders. It's easily for people to get separated. After two or three days, you see them getting reunited. In the north east of Nigeria, where you have the conflict that has been protracted for more than a decade, that is where you have a lot of challenges. And you can see the like chat region for countries surrounding the like chat is really making things much more difficult. Once people are able to jump into another country, then it becomes the territory of another country. Coming back. I mean, you just brought into my next question because I was going to ask, especially for areas where, you know, bordering countries are having almost the same kinds of conflicts and conflicts or, you know, a guerrilla warfare of sorts. How then do you generate this data? Because especially in countries like Nigeria, where our data is, I mean, we generate data, but then those data can be sometimes questioned. And sometimes you can't, you're not, it's not thorough enough for you to go by. And so most times, even as journalists, we rely on international communities like ICRC or CSIS for certain facts and figures. So how do you generate this data? How did, for example, you come up with this 45 percent from Nigeria? How do you get your data? OK, thank you very much for this question also. Getting data is something that we put on the table. We have, first, our community contact center number that people are informed about in various media organizations. We have cuts that are given to people during our activities in the notice of Nigeria and also in the south south of Nigeria and the north central states. We try to give out these cuts. It's clearly indicating our community contact center that is running five all the work days and all the working hours. People are free to call it a toll free line. So this is one aspect of it. Second aspect of it is that we work closely with the Nigerian Red Cross in this regard. So Nigerian Red Cross is spread across the country in all the 36 plus Abuja, 37 states of the federation and all the LGS, they have their divisions where people can also go in there and lodge in their complaints. Once a case is registered, then we take up this case and try to follow all the standard that we follow. Of course, this data that we have is a data that is limited only to the ICRC. I'm not sure if I know any other organizations. Perhaps other organizations are doing this also registering people. But it's good to think about this and also see how to harmonize this. One key thing I will have to mention about people that are missing or the families who are missing people is something that is very, very crucial. Assume that a breadwinner of a family died or was killed or has disappeared and the family does not know where he is. It's a lot of trauma to the family that is one. Secondly, the families may not have access to many of his assets. He may have learned that he has acquired, he may have a house, he may have a bank account. So it's almost very, very difficult because now they are uncertain whether this person is dead or alive. They will have to pass through a lot of legal procedures to be able to reclaim or claim the assets of this person. So people just limit it to him being disappearing. But then he has been the breadwinner. Now they are living without food to eat, without clothing, without schooling and so on and so forth. And then he had assets already that they find it very, very difficult. So legally wise, I think there should be a good way to harmonize this, to be able to make sure that these families that have lost their or their relatives have disappeared, there should be a standard way to be able to organize so that they can have access to some of the assets and some of the wealth their loved ones are having so that the family can still keep surviving. For someone like you who's worked across the region, different countries are on the continent in terms of dealing with humanitarian issues. And these missing persons are still focused. Many people have either been abducted because they were critics of government and so they disappeared without a trace. Many may have been like we have stated earlier on victims of war, many may have been abducted by gunmen or bandits like in the case of Nigeria. What do you think the challenges from your work was different in the different countries? What do you think the major challenges? Is it that the governments are unable to retrieve these people, to find them and get them back? Or is it that there's someone's willingness on the part of some of these governments to actually go out of their way to find these people? For example, in Nigeria, there is a certain daddyata that's been missing forever and nobody can account for him till today. Sure. Okay, it's good to draw a line between a humanitarian organization and the politics of a country. So I am not going to dwell into the political angle of country or disappearance because of politics and other political angles. No, I'm going to talk about the International Committee of the Red Cross, our mandate and what we do about the disappearing of people and the effort we are having. And also to remember that these people actually need answers to where their families are. And these people actually need to have their families reunited back to them. So the effort should be like to come together to try to see. I see as a mandate of supporting people that are affected by armed conflict and violence. We do not have a mandate in other contexts. The context is actually on armed conflict and other situations of violence. So you're telling me that you deal directly with the people and not necessarily with governments? Is that what you're saying? So you deal with the Red Cross in different countries or what they call in different, in other parts of the world, then they might not necessarily be called the Red Cross. The Red Cross is a family. The Red Cross is a family. It's a family of other components of the Red Cross. In Nigeria, you have the International Committee of the Red Cross where I belong. And then you have the International Federation of Red Cross which is in charge of managing natural disasters. And then you have the host, the Nigerian Red Cross Society which is also supporting in terms of epidemics and also natural disasters, at the same time supporting the ICRC in armed conflict and violence. So this is the setup. In every country you go, this is how the Red Cross family is working. We are all Red Cross family. We work together. We try to support one another. This is one aspect of it. Secondly, yeah, of course we have one, two, three challenges that we are facing. Whenever we work in conflict situations, you really have to have issues that have to do with abduction, issues that have to do with kidnappings and so on and so forth. We are also not, I mean, we are also vulnerable to kidnappings. 2018, we had two of our colleagues in the notice of Nigeria that were abducted, Hawa and Saifura. We still have them in our minds. We still remember them very well and we attribute ourselves to them and we will really continue to remember them. This is unacceptable for armed groups to attack civilian populations. It's unacceptable to the international humanitarian law. So civilians are always to be protected. They are not supposed to be targeted. Civilians and civilian objectives, schools, hospitals, they are ambulance services. These are all protected objectives of civilians. Economic trees, oh, if you can list them on and on and on, as long as civilians are not part of the fighting, prohibited, is not allowed according to the international humanitarian law for them to be targeted as civilians. They should be allowed to look for their own humanitarian organizations like ours, humanitarian actors, vehicles and all their facilities are also supposed to be respected by all actors to the conflict. Well, thank you very much. Ali Udaub is from the ICRC and we appreciate you for speaking with us. Thank you for inviting me and have a good evening. All right. Well, thank you all for staying with us. We'll take a short break now to see what Nigerians have to say about government efforts in rescuing people who have disappeared or are missing. We'll be right back. No. My answer is capital letter no. No in the sense that there have been spades, several spades of kidnapping and ransom pain inside the country Nigeria is a sovereign state. And these bandits, they are not outside the border of this country, they are within this country. And ransom is being paid to these people. They release students or captives in batches and the government of Nigeria goes all the way to Kenya to arrest and bring kidnap abducting them. They cannot bring them to Kosovo here and then we cannot find those bandits in this country. Then the government of Nigeria has not done enough in terms of security. I can tell you that. Take it anywhere. The government has not done enough. Well, so far to the best of my knowledge, I don't think they are doing enough. I don't even think they are doing anything because from the things, from the previous kidnappings and the ones that are currently happening, I don't think they are doing anything. Instead, they are encouraging the kidnappers because once the kidnapped people and they pay ransom to the kidnappers or the bandits, what do you expect to those that are not doing anything to do? It improves the whole situation, get people to get more into the business. I think they are trying their best but if they put in more effort to look for those children, like maybe increase the security in the nation or increase the pay of security officers so to boost their morale. They are not doing well. They are not doing enough. They must work on it as a government. Government is to protect the life of a citizen but every day we are hearing rumours of wanting the other and the country is not settled. They have to do something to make sure Nigeria is a place for me and them to stay. First of all, to start with, the government is not doing enough. The government needs to really put, be very intentional about rescuing these kids. For most of them, people in government have families and how would they feel if they have their loved ones kidnapped? Obviously, if it happens to any of them, they would have done everything in their capacity to get them out of this kidnap as them. Well, I totally agree with the respondents because sometimes our leaders are not you know, alive to their responsibilities when it comes to dealing with security issues but if it hits close to home, then maybe they might just awake and decide to do what is right by Nigerians. I am Mary Annakon. Thank you for watching. See you tomorrow. Have a good evening.