Missing in warfare

Everyone has the right to know the fate of family members missing as a result of armed conflict. That is part of international humanitarian law. Yet it is not the reality for many tens of thousands of families around the world.

This assembly is designed to help students appreciate why it is important to know the fate of someone who is missing.

The script below can be performed as it is by staff or students or a mixture. Or it can be adapted and worked on through rehearsal. The add-ons that follow it suggest possibilities for variants and additions. The follow-up activities suggest ways to explore the issues in more depth in class after the assembly.

Teachers may like to read the tracing and message briefing which explains the process of tracing missing people, referred to in the script.

Download the assembly kit as a PDF or Word  document or continue reading this page. Photos to accompany the assembly are available in a Powerpoint presentation.

Age group

Aims

• To increase students' appreciation of the human stress and suffering caused when family members are missing and their fate unknown.
• To raise students' awareness of the laws that exist to prevent enforced disappearances and which require authorities to record those captured and killed during armed conflict
• To help students explore what might be done by families, aid agencies, states and others to reduce the suffering of the families of the disappeared and help them to regain control of their lives.

Performance

The speaking parts have been assigned to four voices who speak in sequence. These can be split further or combined and read by a single speaker, as necessary.

Voice 1
It can happen suddenly, out of the blue. People leave their homes on a routine errand, and never come back.

Voice 2
It may happen more gradually. Letters or phone calls from someone working elsewhere dry up. Slowly the realisation dawns that something is wrong – though news never arrives.

Voice 3
Or the event may be in full view of a community – with women, children and the elderly being separated from the men, who are taken off in trucks, never to be seen again.

Voice 4
Today we are talking about people missing in warfare. It may be during a war between two or more countries. Or it may happen during an internal conflict, or civil war.

Voice 1 
Those who go missing during times of political repression are often known as "the disappeared".

Voice 2 
Other people are unaccounted for because they have been captured or killed, and no one has reported what happened.

Voice 3
Then there is another group – those who are missing because they lost contact with their families during the confusion of war, perhaps while moving to a safer place.

Voice 4
The families of those missing may hope that their relative is safe, and will return one day. They may also fear the worst.

Voice 1
Around the world, many tens of thousands of families suffer with the uncertainty of forced disappearances or loss during war.

[optional photograph section]

Voice 2
Here are some photographs showing those left waiting.

• a missing son from Argentina
• portraits of the missing in Belarus
• a young boy at a demonstration in Morocco
• in South Africa, the photo of a brother

Voice 3
As you can see, the people unaccounted for in armed conflict spread all over the world.

[end optional photograph section]

Voice 4
Tens of thousands of families in Peru, Colombia and Argentina do not know the fate of their missing relatives.

Voice 1 
Nor do hundreds of thousands in Western Sahara, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Voice 2
In the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Armenia, Iran and Iraq many tens of thousands of missing are still unaccounted for.

Voice 3
Thousands of families still await news of their relatives in Sri Lanka and East Timor.

Voice 4
What can be done? What we have heard is distressing. It reveals the suffering of a lot of people. Yet people are resilient, and even under terrible adversity, they act.

Voice 1
We will look at three things that are helping – the law, networks of families, and investigations and tracing.

Voice 2
The right to know the fate of a relative is set out clearly in international humanitarian law – also known as "the laws of war".

Voice 3
It is illegal to arrest people and hold them in secret. Next-of-kin must be informed about captured, wounded or deceased relatives without delay.

Voice 4
Lists must be made of the exact locations and markings of graves, together with details of the people buried in them.

Voice 1
Those laws are part of the Geneva Conventions, dating back to last century. They are also clearly set out in a more recent International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

Voice 2
Most countries also have their own national laws which make it illegal to hold prisoners secretly.

Voice 3
If the law was respected, the only people missing in armed conflict would be those accidentally separated during the confusion of war.

Voice 4
The law is not always respected. As a result, there are many examples of people protesting publicly against violations of the law. They plead for greater efforts to find their relatives.

Voice 1
Scores of women activists, holding photographs of relatives, protested in the streets in India.

Voice 2
Candlelight rallies were held in 40 districts of Nepal to protest against the disappearance of thousands of Nepalis.

Voice 3
For many years a group of women gathered every Thursday afternoon in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. For half an hour they would walk around the central square. Many wore white scarves to symbolise the white dove of peace.

Voice 4
Such networks – often mainly women – support each other. From their shared experience, they understand what each other is going through in ways that no one else can.

Voice 1
The women – wives, sisters, daughters, mothers and grandmothers – stir the consciences of those responsible and remind the authorities of their legal and moral duties.

Voice 2
The third important activity is the use of identification and tracing services.

Voice 3
Forensic science plays its part in the grisly business of examining corpses, digging up mass graves, and using modern scientific techniques to try to identify the victims. 

Voice 4
In the past, such investigations focused on finding evidence to bring those responsible to trial. People now realise that identifying the victims is just as important.

Voice 1
There is a global network set up to trace missing people. It is operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, alongside national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies. Prisoners and detainees are visited wherever possible and their identities collated.

Voice 2
People separated in the confusion of war can also register their details and search for missing relatives.

Voice 3
Why is all this important? The reason is simply humanity. Tracing people and identifying remains can bring an end to the anguish. It can allow families to grieve, then begin to move on to rebuilding their lives. It cannot stop the brutality of war. But it can reduce the suffering of some people.

End of performance

Add-ons

Use the following ideas to change the script or add to the learning potential.

Day of the disappeared
Each year, 30 August is designated International Day of the Disappeared. Events are organised by the families of victims all over the world to commemorate the disappeared. Students could find out what is happening where and build more detail into the assembly.

Consider focusing on a part of the world that has some meaning for the students – from previous work, links or students' own associations.

The best starting point is the website icaed.org

What is going on?
Encourage discussion by showing the photographs in the accompanying Powerpoint presentation but without saying what is happening. This could be done right at the beginning of the assembly, or as a pre-performance project.

Prompt students to piece together what might be going on. Why are people carrying photographs? What is the mood of the people?

Although they show different people in different parts of the world, the experiences of families with missing relatives are strikingly similar. Ask students to list what those experiences and feelings might be.

Map add-on
Use a map of the world to point to the areas where large numbers of people are missing. The list in the assembly script is designed to move clearly from right to left on a standard projection (Peters or Mercator) of the world. In advance of the assembly, students could identify the countries and then mark them during the performance as they are mentioned.

The list in the script gives selected examples only. It is not comprehensive. Students could research recent history and current affairs and add others.

Follow-up activities

Here are some possible examples. Share the ideas with other teachers who may wish to cover the topic in their lessons after the assembly.

The stress of not knowing
Help students appreciate the power of uncertainty by looking at examples that they might be familiar with from their own lives.

Invite students to list occasions they know of in which not knowing has caused anxiety. For example:

• Waiting for something to start that you are not looking forward to, such as an exam, and where you don't know what is going to happen.
• Having an undiagnosed disease or symptoms you can't explain.
• If a toddler runs out of sight, even for a few minutes.
• When you are waiting for a friend to phone or text – but you hear nothing.
• For parents, when teenagers are out in the evening and not back at the agreed time.

Discuss how people deal with these kinds of everyday occurrences. What helps – such as having the support of others who understand?

Talk about how removing the uncertainty changes things. Why is it easier to deal with an illness when you know what it is? How does this relate to the need of the families of the missing to know the fate of their relatives? List the ways that they will be able to get on with their lives.

The words of those involved
For greater understanding of the issue, listen to the words of those involved. There are two useful videos on The Missing, a website provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross. See End the Silence (14 mins) and the shorter film The Right to Know (4 mins 30 seconds).

Invite students to design a poster drawing attention to the plight of the families of the missing and explaining their right to justice.

The children of the disappeared
When adults go missing their children may be left behind. What happens if those children are very young – babies or toddlers?

Invite students to think through the options. Then tell them about children of the disappeared in Argentina. Alternatively, invite them to explore themselves using internet news sites. (Children of the disappeared Argentina is a productive search string.)

Some 25 years after Argentina's disappearances, people who were adopted as babies are beginning to find out the truth of their origins. Shockingly, some were adopted by the military officers responsible for the deaths of their parents. Others were adopted by civilian families who raised them as their own.

Some adoptive parents have been prosecuted for their actions. In other cases, their adoptive children have forgiven them. Many still want to find what they can of their birth parents. Read a rare account of someone being reunited with their family.

Invite students to explore the emotions of the different people involved. Ask the class to imagine they have a friend who was beginning to have suspicions that the family they grew up with was not their birth family. They feared that their real parents may have been murdered, perhaps by someone connected to their adoptive parents.

What would students talk about to their friend? Together, list some of the considerations they might want to explore before taking any action.