Zimbabwe
Practice Relating to Rule 117. Accounting for Missing Persons
In Zimbabwe, domestic legislation on missing persons outside armed conflict empowers judicial officers to compel police officers to search for a missing person. The Report on the Practice of Zimbabwe states that this demonstrates that the authorities in Zimbabwe believe that missing persons, even in armed conflict, should be searched for.
Zimbabwe’s Code of Conduct for Combatants (1993) states:
THE ICRC’S CENTRAL TRA[C]ING AGENCY
In international conflicts, civil war and situations of internal disturbances and tensions, its tasks are as follows:
1. To obtain, record, process and transmit all information required for the identification of persons being traced by the ICRC;
2. To forward correspondence between dispersed family members when normal means of communication are disrupted;
3. To seek persons reported missing or whose relatives are without news of them;
4. To reunite families and organize transfers and repatriations.