GENEVA, March 5: Hundreds of thousands of women have been made destitute, homeless, or lost custody of their children as a result of their husbands going missing in war, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Wednesday.

The Geneva-based ICRC, which helps victims of armed conflict and monitors compliance to international law, said too little attention is paid to those left behind when battlefield deaths go undocumented, or when people are detained in secret.

Women who have lost their spouses in countries such as Bosnia, Sri Lanka and Nepal are no longer wives yet not officially widows, making their legal status unclear.

Without a death certificate, women are kept from gaining access to or claiming inheritances and other compensation. They can also lose guardianship of their children and the right to live in their homes, and be prevented from remarrying.

“Some of these women are completely destitute,” Florence Tercier, who heads the ICRC’s programme to help women in war, told a news conference.

She said that many women spend years and all their savings searching for their loved ones, and can often fall prey to those seeking to take advantage of their exhaustion and desperation.

Tercier said there were 12,832 people unaccounted for more than a decade since the end of war in Bosnia, of whom 1,402 are women. In Sri Lanka, there are 5,966 people registered as missing with the ICRC, including 223 women. And in Nepal 105 of the 1,128 people missing from conflict are female.

In Rwanda, Tercier said that 23 per cent of adult women were widowed by the 1994 genocide, and discriminatory laws in place had initially prevented them from inheriting land or getting loans to start rebuilding their lives.

“Women may not be able to seek help from the authorities due to financial constraints, safety concerns, cultural barriers or a lack of information,” the ICRC said in a report issued ahead of International Women’s Day, March 8.

“It is the responsibility of the authorities concerned to support women in their struggle for their own survival and that of their families,” it said.

The ICRC and its national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies work on behalf of families who have lost contact with relatives during armed conflicts, visiting places of detention, hospitals and mortuaries, and asking authorities to investigate.

It also covers transport costs so families of the missing can visit mass graves or exhumation sides, and provides women with assistance dealing with questions related to inheritance, pensions, child custody and property rights.—Reuters