Refugees United, a non-profit organisation that has developed the world’s first mobile-based refugee family tracing service to help reconnect families separated by war or natural disaster, has revealed that it has registered 100,000 refugees on its platform.

The service, developed by Refugees United in partnership with Ericsson, has registered users from across the globe, but at the moment primarily sees its surge in numbers from African countries such as Somalia, Congo, and Sudan. With the current conflict between Sudan and South Sudan, numbers from this specific refugee group are also expected to increase, as families flee the regions and end up in separate places and refugee camps.

Refugees United focuses on expanding the technology via partner collaboration with bodies such as the Red Cross and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in refugee camps and urban areas of various African countries, where teams on ground help illiterate refugees benefit from the technology.

Two Congolese refugee brothers who were separated in 1998 during the Second Congo War, when a community-based militia group attacked their local village, were recently reunited via the mobile platform after more than 10 years of separation.

“It’s stories like this that demonstrate the impact of the right technologies in solving some of the world’s most pressing problems,” says Refugees United, co-founder, Christopher Mikkelsen. “100,000 people registered on the Refugees United family tracing platform in search of missing family members is a testament to the pressing need for family tracing globally,” “Of the 43m forcibly displaced people worldwide, hundreds of thousand refugee families remain scattered across the globe – we hope that it’s a problem we can help eradicate with the use of our technology and growing network of partnerships with entities like Ericsson, MTN Group, Safaricom, and UNHCR.”
According to the United Nations, there are currently 43m forcibly displaced people worldwide, the highest number in 15 years, with numbers expected to increase significantly in the medium-term due to conflicts and climate change effects.