GENEVA (Reuters) -The number of people reported missing to the Red Cross has risen by about 70% in five years, driven by rising conflicts and mass migration, the Geneva-based organisation said Friday, calling for a recommitment to the rules of war.

“…The surging number of missing persons provides a stark reminder that conflict parties and those who support them are failing to protect people during war,” said Pierre Krähenbühl, Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Some 284,400 were reported missing by the end of last year, up from 169,500 in 2019, with conflicts in Sudan, Gaza and Ukraine among the factors driving the increase, the ICRC said.

The real number is thought to be many times higher.

The Geneva Conventions – a series of international treaties agreed in 1949 after World War Two – should help prevent separations but respect for such rules was fading, the ICRC statement said.

“With stronger measures to prevent separation, protect those in detention and properly manage the dead, countless families could be spared a lifetime of anguish,” Krähenbühl added.

The ICRC, together with Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies around the world, works to search for missing persons and reconnect families through the Family Links Network.

Some of the teams of its Central Tracing Agency are in an old Geneva manor house, making calls and trawling through documents to find people – a task the ICRC has been doing since the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.

Sometimes, there are happy endings and last year 16,000 missing people were located, the ICRC said.

(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Alex Richardson)