In continuation
of the effort to raise awareness about the role that technology plays for underserved
refugee populations, Ericsson and mobile operators supports of the United
National Humanitarian and Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and Refugees United
in their cause to help refugees find missing family members and loved ones.
A press
statement from Ericsson showed that with 43 million people forcibly displaced
around the world, family separation due to war, famine and natural disasters
remains an enormous challenge.
He said, thousands
of families are struggling to find their missing loved ones with whom they have
lost contact.
UNHCR in its
annual report on the trends in forced displacement citing a record of 80,000
people forced to flee across borders. ”2011 saw suffering on an epic scape. For
so many lives to have been thrown into turmoil over so short a space of time
means enormous personal cost for all who were affected,” said António Guterres,
the UNHCR Chief and High Commissioner for Refugees.
At the
Rio+Social event in June, Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, António
Guterres UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and Christopher Mikkelsen,
co-founder of Refugees United, addressed a largely social media oriented
audience about the plight of refugees, and asked the audience to use their
collective force to spread the word about the refugee cause, and the Refugees
United online family tracing service.
Today, the
Refugees United family tracing service is available via web, WAP and Android
applications to serve refugees with low-end handsets and lower speed
connectivity as well as refugees residing in countries with a larger proportion
of smart phones.
DigitalSENSE
News gathered that Refugees United and Ericsson have reached and exceed the challenging
joint target of 120,000 refugees registered on the database within 2012 as the
service is spreading and 800 new users are added every week.
Additionally,
they said that Vodafone Egypt supports the cause, stressing that the spread and
effectiveness of the tool is proven by a recent reconnection case were two
Somali brothers in two different parts of the world found each other via the
Refugees United platform after only 2 months of search supported by Kenya Red
Cross.
According to
the press statement, brothers fled an Al-Shabaab militia attack in 1998 and
didn’t see each other since. The younger of the brothers, then 7 years old,
travelled to Kenya while his
older brother fled to Pakistan,
from which he was resettled to the US.
Refugees
United ambassador and award-winning actor Mads Mikkelsen says: “Family has
always been very important to me, and being a father of two myself, I simply
cannot imagine the hardships that these brothers must have gone through.
Separated from each other and the rest of their family when they were 7 and
13-years-old, just a few years younger than my kids are now, is just unbearable
– and, at the same time, the reality for thousands and thousands of refugee
families. Refugees United and partners are using technology to solve a pressing
problem related to family – something that we can all relate to”.
Remmy Nweke
ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D
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