Red Cross says over 100,000 missing people creates ‘global crisis’

Over 100,000 people around the world are missing, which has created “a global crisis,” the International Committee of the Red Cross has said. Agnes Coutou, the organization’s protection adviser, told the UN General Assembly’s human rights committee on Monday that “this is the highest number we have ever had,” AP reports. “We know that this is the tip of the iceberg and that it represents only a fraction of those estimated to be missing because of past and ongoing conflicts,” she said. The Red Cross works with the families of missing persons and authorities in over 40 countries affected by past and current conflicts. It also chairs five bodies trying to resolve cases of missing persons. Three factors driving the crisis are the scale of armed conflicts; the “intergenerational impact” of people missing for decades on their families; and the increased internationalization of the problem.