Marion Huot, investigator for separate siblings
Having to leave your home for humanitarian reasons can mean leaving your home, your possessions and leaving with only one suitcase. Leaving home can also mean leaving or losing loved ones. It is to constantly wonder where is your brother, your sister, your mother, your father. Hope that they are safe, that they are still alive.
Marion Huot, as a research officer at the French Red Cross since 2018, accompanies families in their quests to find family members who have been separated by wars, natural disasters or the migration route. “We will try to find the missing persons. It is based on the fact that there is the Red Cross or the Red Crescent in practically every country in the world and in every country there are people like me who work to try to find missing loved one at the request of families" (2’09). It could be family members contacting her directly or the Red Cross from other countries.
It was after an internship in 2015 in Greece at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that she wanted to engage in humanitarian work. “When I went to these camps, I found myself facing something I wasn’t necessarily prepared for. I remember this camp which was on the outskirts of Athens. It was rows and rows of Algeco, small prefabricated apartments where families were crowded. And in full sun, the ground was tar, it was in the middle of an industrial area. It was a truly striking vision, and we wonder whether we are really welcoming them in a dignified way and proposing something for the future.” (6’03)
Marked for life by this experience, she succeeds in convincing the administration of her school and left to help a donation center in the “Jungle of Calais”, where there are several refugee camps in France.
Then, she joined the team of the French Red Cross and became mobile in the Haute-France zone, that is to say that she travels in the region to make interviews with those who wish to find their family members. Some of the meetings were very touching, including the one of a 16-year-old teenager who lost track of his family at the age of 11 when he left Afghanistan. “During the interview, I also offered to post his photo on the “Trace The Face” website, a website created by the Red Cross so that people who are looking for a loved one could post photos of themselves, saying :”here, I am looking for my father, my brother, ect.” So he accepted and his picture was published (12’16)
Like Marion Huot, who works on more than 200 research files, many of them are working with teams in the 191 countries where the Red Cross and Red Crescent are located to reunite these families who had to flee their native country.