The Emirates Red Crescent, ERC, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC, have organised a two-day joint training on restoring family links, RFL, for more than twenty participants from the ERC’s volunteers and staff.

The training, which took place in Abu Dhabi as part of the ongoing cooperation between the ERC and the ICRC, aimed at building the participants’ capacity, strengthening their knowledge on restoring family links, and introducing pivotal online tools.

Sophie Barbey, the ICRC Head of Office based in Dubai, underscored the importance of restoring family links as a vital humanitarian activity in the region, and praised the efforts of the ERC in hosting such training, saying, "People suffer terribly when they lose contact with their loved ones, and do not know where they are or whether they are safe. In these unfortunate situations, restoring family links, a core activity of the ICRC and Red Cross and Red Crescent partners worldwide, plays a vital role in restoring hope to these families."

The joint training included experts from the ICRC who shared their experience with the UAE participants to promote their capacity in providing services such as locating people, exchanging family news, reuniting families and clarifying the fate of missing people.

Fahad Abdulrahman bin Sultan, Deputy Secretary-General for International Aid at the ERC emphasised the need to provide the appropriate conditions to achieve the best possible results in the area of RFL.

He also highlighted the aim to enhance the teams’ participation in RFL activities in field humanitarian work, especially in camps run by the ERC in Iraq, Jordan, Greece and Lebanon, in addition to promoting efforts of RFL teams in all areas, namely humanitarian programmes for reuniting scattered families.