Tool eases burden of tracing lost loved ones

 

By Allan Olingo

Seven years ago, the Mikkelson brothers – David and Christopher – met Mansour, a young Afghanistan refugee who had lost contact with family after escaping from the Taliban during the height of chaos in their country.

The brothers met young Mansour at a refugee camp in Denmark. David and Christopher’s attention was grabbed by Mansour. Interested in the boy, they sought to know his story through a translator.

It had taken Mansour four months on a journey through Russia and across Eastern Europe to get to the camp in Copenhagen.

Mansour told the brothers that his only wish was to reconnect with his family. He looked at them as the angels who had visited him in the camp with the power to fulfill his wish.

Touched by his story, the Mikkelson brothers offered to help him find his family. Immediately, they contacted the various refugee organizations that work in their country.

And in trying to help Mansour, they discovered a huge gap in reconnecting refugees.

 

Great happiness

“While helping Mansour search for his family, we discovered that existing family tracing programmes were lacking in using collaborative technology. Paper forms completed meant little information was shared across agencies, across borders or across conflicts,” says David.

It took six years for the brothers to bring Mansour good news – they reunited him with his brother in Moscow last year.

The happiness that this brother to Mansour, David and Christopher was so great that the brothers wanted to do more to help others find this happiness. David and Christopher went ahead to found Refugees United, to ease the burden of refugees tracing their loved ones.

“We knew the refugees needed to find a better way to find their family members. The world has hundreds of thousands of refugees who desperately wanted to reconnect with long-lost relatives and friends,” says David.

 

Loved ones

David says refugees can register at no cost on the Refugees United internet search site. Using information that is recognizable only to family and close friends, such as nicknames, scars, family names, former locations and the likes, they then can search for their loved ones in the pool of registered refugees.

Jonathan Patrick, 30, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, fled his home town in Kivu in 1998 and lives in Nairobi.

“When I left home, I was separated from the rest of my family. I did not know where any of them was. The Refugee Consortium of Kenya informed me about this application late last year and I registered. Four months later, I was able to trace my brother who now resides in the United States in March this year,” says Patrick.

Patrick says he used family secrets, code words, some nicknames to identify his brother. This, he says, is the only way you can be sure it is your people you have found.

“From the conversations we had, I learnt that my family is safe in the US and I am the only one who stays in Kenya. This was the greatest thing I have heard since the family got lost. Knowing that my family is well and I will see them one day is happiness beyond measure. This tool made it possible for me; I hope many more will get to use it to locate their lost ones,” he says.

Fidel Mugawo, 26, is another refugee from Congo who was able to trace his sister in Uganda using the application.

“One of the Refugee Consortium of Kenya field monitors visited Kasarani where I stay and told us to try the application in our search for our lost kin. I registered but the financial challenges of getting to a cyber cafe slowed me down. However, I was able to trace my sister, who lives in a refugee camp in Kampala Uganda. It was good, really good to trace your family,” says Mugawo.

Mugawo is still working on tracing the rest of his family members because his sister does not know what happened to them after the conflict escalated in 2010 and everyone ran for safety.

“I hope that they will get to know about this technology and register from wherever they are so that I can be able to trace them.  Despite all, I am happy that my sister is safe. We have shared pictures and I wish we could talk more often but the financial challenges from both of us are inhibitive,” he says.

Mutiare Edmond from Burundi is also another happy refugee. He reconnected with his childhood friends whom he last saw when the war broke out.

“We were playing outside when there was heavy gunfire. We could not run back home but took off. That was the last time I saw him. I later came to Kenya where I live in Eastleigh,” says Edmond.

 

Not successful

“When I registered, I searched for my family but was unsuccessful. I decided to search for my friends and it paid off when I located one of them seven months later. Luckily, he lives in Kawangware in Nairobi which means we easily touch base,” he says.

According to Edmond, he was able to track his friend by asking him questions to do with the childhood games that they played, his home town and his family members’ names. They have been able to physically meet a couple of times.

 

Connecting refugees

Lucy Kiama, the executive director of Refugee Consortium Kenya, says the main challenge of connecting refugees is when the other refugees in other countries do not register. This makes it difficult to help in the reconnection process.

“We depend heavily on the community-based monitors who assist in telling people about this tool. We hope to have a greater penetration in all the camps within and outside Kenya so that we can reconnect most of these refugees with their families,” says Kiama.

Together with Erickson, Refugee Consortium of Kenya and Safaricom, this application has helped thousands of refugees in Kenya reconnect with their family members across the world.

David says he is happy every time refugees are reunited and it is his desire to see more tracing their loved ones.