The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has disclosed that at least 24,000 Nigerians have been reported missing by their families since 2015, with children making up the majority of those unaccounted for.
Speaking during a media workshop in Maiduguri, María Toscano, the ICRC’s Protection of Family Links Team Leader, revealed that the humanitarian organisation is still actively tracing those missing.
She noted that Borno State alone accounts for nearly 9,000 of the 16,000 cases recorded in the northeast, with Bama Local Government Area representing the single highest caseload at approximately 5,000.
“Of the 24,000 persons reported missing, 71 per cent of the cases occurred between 2014 and 2015,” Toscano said.
“What is even more alarming is that 65 per cent of those who disappeared in the northeast were children at the time they went missing.”
She added that while the ICRC continues efforts to reunite families, progress has been slow due to ongoing access challenges in conflict-affected areas and the difficulty of establishing contact with displaced families.
So far, 11 people have been reunited with their families in 2025, in addition to 13 in 2024.
Toscano emphasised that the crisis of missing persons remains a pressing humanitarian concern in Nigeria, particularly in communities devastated by prolonged armed conflict, insecurity, and displacement.
Also speaking at the event, Head of the ICRC sub-delegation in Maiduguri, Diana Japaridze, highlighted the deep emotional toll borne by families who have been unable to locate their loved ones for years. She described the situation as a silent tragedy affecting thousands of households across the country.
“Some people spend years searching for loved ones, often with no result. Families have a right to know their fate,” Japaridze said. “In the chaos of armed conflict, situations of violence and disasters, families can become separated in a matter of minutes, creating anguish and vulnerability and sometimes leading to long years of uncertainty about the fate of children, spouses or parents.”
She called on the media to play a more active role in raising awareness about the issue and amplifying the voices of affected families. According to Japaridze, both international humanitarian law and human rights law recognise the obligation of states to address the plight of missing persons and support efforts aimed at tracing them.
“While States should raise public awareness of the problem of missing persons as a fundamental concern of international humanitarian law and human rights law, the mass media must draw the public’s attention to this problem and the needs of families of missing persons,” she said.
Japaridze urged journalists to deepen their engagement with the issue and to report with sensitivity and accuracy. “We hope the knowledge and discussions we are going to share and have during the training will help you, the media professionals, research on the topic more deeply, ask better questions, write quality content, and thus report it in a more professional, unbiased, and empathetic manner,” she said.
The ICRC has consistently emphasised that the right of families to know the fate and whereabouts of missing relatives must be upheld, and that the psychological and legal needs of families should not be neglected amid broader recovery and peacebuilding efforts in the region.
