Organized by the ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency in collaboration with Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies, the event provided a safe space where families of loved ones gone missing due to conflict, migration and other situations of violence, could share the common burden of the pain and anguish of not knowing the fate of their missing family members, and the ongoing struggle to find healing. 

Sadiya Abubakar, like many of the participants at the conference, is not unfamiliar with the void that a missing family member leaves behind. As the Vice Chairperson of the family Association in Yola, Adamawa state, and as a parent who has searched for her son for over ten years, she is privy to the emotional, mental, physical, economic and even legal ramifications embroiled in the process of finding a loved one