[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 35 (Thursday, March 24, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                  TECHNOLOGY USED TO REUNITE FAMILIES

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                            HON. JOHN BRYANT

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 24, 1994

  Mr. BRYANT. Mr. Speaker, we are all saddened by the pictures we see 
of the refugees from that terrible conflict in the former Yugoslavia. 
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] estimates 
that there are 3.8 million displaced persons throughout Europe. More 
than 40,000 of those refugees are unaccompanied children separated from 
their families, and who now live in camps for the refugees and the 
displaced.
  I am pleased to announce, however, that there is an effort underway 
to use technology to bring these children back to their families. The 
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the EDS Corporation from 
my hometown of Dallas, and the French company Bull Worldwide 
Information Systems, have joined together to address this problem.
  Using CD-ROM and client-server technology on a system developed by 
EDS, this team will construct a data base of information and photos so 
that the UNHCR representatives can use it in the field to help bring 
families together. Called Operation reUNite, the program is seen as a 
first step in addressing the overall problem of missing children from 
the former Yugoslavia.
  Operation reUNite is helping the UNHCR organization have access to 
vast amounts of information to help them solve the heart-wrenching 
problem of putting children together with their families. This program 
certainly shows that technology has a human face and can cut to the 
most basic of human needs.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with my colleagues a wire service 
report from Reuters discussing Operation reUNite.

               (From Reuter World Service, Mar. 22, 1994)

            Parents In Bosnia To Use Computers To Trace Kids

                         (By Stephanie Nebehay)

       Geneva--Parents throughout Bosnia, who in desperation 
     shoved an estimated 40,000 children on trains and buses to 
     escape the fighting, will be able to trace them soon via a 
     computer list, the United Nations said on Tuesday. ``These 
     are children whose parents, panicking as the war came toward 
     them, gave their children to anybody who was managing to get 
     out,'' UNHCR spokeswoman Sylvana Foa told a news briefing.
       ``Children were pushed through bus windows, put on trains 
     and thrown into cars as people tried to flee from one area to 
     another. Parents sent their kids out as fast as they could.''
       ``Operation Reunite'' was launched by the U.N. High 
     Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) amid signs the 23-month-old 
     civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina may be coming to an end.
       UNHCR, the main relief agency in former Yugoslavia, is 
     providing food and medical supplies to about 2.5 million 
     people displaced by the fighting between the three warring 
     factions. U.N. experts estimate there are 40,000 
     unaccompanied minors under age 18 who have shown up in 
     refugee centres and countries of asylum, according to UNHCR. 
     These include 20,000 in Croatia.
       Britain, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and 
     Turkey generally decided that unaccompanied minors were the 
     most vulnerable, Foa said. ``This registration process needed 
     to be done really fast.'' ``If you wait too long these kids 
     start to forget who they are. Some of these kids don't even 
     know their names,'' she added. ``They don't know their date 
     of birth, they don't know anything.''

  UNHCR said it was collecting documentation on the children, taking 
their photographs and storing it all on computer disks. It hoped that 
distraught parents could look at the first 500 cases, already stored on 
computer disks, by next month.
  The disks will initially go to 10 locations throughout former 
Yugoslavia--including Sarajevo, Tuzla and Zenica--although UNHCR aims 
to have 40 such centres eventually. ``Parents will be able to go to one 
of these locations, sit down at the computer, and search through the 
photographs by anything--nickname, approximate date of birth, colour of 
eyes, colour of hair and whatever we can do to try to cross reference 
(the information),'' Foa told reporters in Geneva.
  The $2.2 million project is being financed with grants from the 
London-based George Soros foundation and the U.S. Agency for 
International Development (AID), as well as two computer firms. The 
Soros Foundation, set up by Hungarian-born billionaire financier George 
Soros, who has already donated $50 million to relief efforts in Bosnia, 
has provided a grant of $620,000.
  Electronic Data Systems Inc., a subsidiary of General Motors 
Corporation, has donated software worth $400,000, equal to the value of 
portable and desk top computers contributed by Compaqnie des Machines 
Bull of France, according to the UNHCR. USAID has provided a $850,000 
grant to be used by ``Unaccompanied Children in Exile,'' a Zagreb-based 
group. ``Parents will have to come back several times if they don't 
find their child on the optical disk the first time,'' Foa said. 
``They'll have to try again and again.'' However, parents will not be 
told the location of the children ``for security reasons,'' according 
to the spokeswoman.
  ``They will be told to contact this or that agency that has the 
child's file,'' Foa said. ``People will be asked to provide 
documentation or will be asked about the child's birthmarks so we can 
be sure we are giving the child to the right parent.'' The 
International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), which operates a 
Central Tracing Agency aimed at locating family members separated by 
conflict, has managed to reunite 590 Bosnian children with their 
families, according to a spokesman.
  ICRC delegates have handled the exchange of five million family 
messages since the start of the Bosnian war, he added. ``We are ready 
to receive all information collected by the UNHCR,'' an ICRC spokesman 
at Geneva headquarters told Reuters.

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