As from October 2011, the Refugees United tool has been utilized by the Italian-based humanitarian aid organization INTERSOS inside Somalia.
INTERSOS is using the Refugees United family tracing tool to further their own mission of helping people with family tracing needs without any direct involvement from Refugees United. INTERSOS is carrying out the tracing project inside Somalia, an area difficult to gain access to for most aid organizations. The goal is to assist thousands of Somali refugees and internally displaced people that have fled drought and political unrest and lost family members on the way to get on to the platform and ultimately reconnect. So far, INTERSOS has assisted nearly 3000 refugees and IDPs (internally displaced people) to get onto the Refugees United platform and search for missing family members and loved ones.
A bit more than half way into the project period, INTERSOS has already achieved their expected target for the entire period. Based on these great achievements, INTERSOS will now scale up the partnership and double their manpower dedicated to assisting refugees with family tracing through the Refugees United tool.
For the family tracing project, INTERSOS has received funding from the UN Office of Humanitarian Assistance, OCHA. Also, INTERSOS has been approved for Common Humanitarian Fund for Somalia CHF-Somalia funding, which grants them access to international donor funds (DFID, Danida etc.). In this respect, INTERSOS demonstrates how it is possible to achieve considerable funding through OCHA and other international bodies to perform crucial tracing work through Refugees United’s platform.
It is a case that demonstrates how the Refugees United tool can be utilized by third party organizations that wish to make their own operations more effective and, moreover, a willingness from international funding bodies to support family tracing in order to help the hundreds of thousand people affected by family separation due to e.g. natural disasters or political unrest.
Marco Procaccini, INTERSOS Protection Coordinator, says:
“Many organizations are concentrating their efforts on providing life saving services, but only one or two are involved in reconnecting families.
INTERSOS has for the last five months been in collaboration with Refugees United. Both organizations compliment each other with Refugees United providing the technology and INTERSOS the human resource with access inside Mogadishu.
The future looks bright as Refugees United continues to develop the registration and monitoring platforms, and as more people – especially those seeking asylum and refuge in the Horn of Africa and other regions – continue to access the platform and search for their families and friends.”
