KENYA: New Mobile Phone Initiative to Help Refugees Relocate Loved Ones

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Submitted by IQ4News on Wed, 22/06/2011 - 8:58am

In an effort to mark World Refugee Day, Safaricom, Ericsson and Refugees United have joined together to provide a new and innovative service that enables refugees to register themselves, search for loved ones, and subsequently reconnect via an anonymous database.

This new initiative will help cut the time it would normally take to locate displaced family members using a paper based system. It particularly takes into consideration the increasing access to mobile phones: Safaricom has over 17 million subscribers in Kenya, compared to an estimated 820,000 people who have access to the internet via a PC. This represents only 2 percent of the population of Kenya.

“This is a great and innovative partnership for us,” said Safaricom CEO, Mr. Bob Collymore.

“Through this service, a very vulnerable segment of our society now has a real chance of being re-united with their loved ones. The service typifies the spirit of problem-solving innovation for societal good that has been the guiding philosophy for our business over the years.”

Pilot

The new service was previously piloted in Adjumani Refugee settlement, Uganda, with UNHCR. According to Refugees United, in the past 9 months more than 41,000 have registered in their search for missing family.

“We are tremendously excited to further our work in Kenya in partnership with Safaricom, enabling us to reach, and help, many more separated refugee families through their one link to the world: Mobile phones,” said David Troensegaard, Co-founder, Refugees United.

“This partnership will help us reach many more people with critical information about this new possibility to potentially restore contact with missing loved ones.”

The population of refugees in East Africa has risen by 8% since September, 2010 to nearly 1.4 million, according to a UNHCR 2011 report.

Most of the refugees were displaced due to civil unrests and natural disasters.

The world-wide number of refugees according to UNHCR is believed to be around 43 million.

“Helping refugees locate their loved ones using mobile text messages and mobile internet is one of the many ways in which technology is changing our world and helping people reconnect,” said United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres.

“Ensuring this is done in a way that respects the privacy and security of individual refugees, UNHCR is proud to participate in this pioneering and highly successful initiative”.