The mandate of the Red Cross tracing service is defined by the Geneva Conventions, and is intended to restore contact between family members who have been separated by war. The Red Cross of Serbia tracing service offers the following possibilities:
To open requests to trace relatives who went missing as a consequence of the conflicts in former Yugoslavia.
To receive and send Red Cross Messages to and from Kosovo and Metohija, since the normal post service system is not working.
To request and obtain information about their stay in prisoner-of-war camps during World War II, if documented in the Red Cross of Serbia and Montenegro archive.
To trace people, in the country or abroad, whose disappearance is not connected to and is not a consequence of the conflicts in the country and the region (humanitarian tracing).

        In 2002, the workload of the tracing service connected to the recent wars has reduced and the service is increasingly dealing with its other work. As in previous years, the tracing service issued confirmations about time spent in captivity and internment in World War II, and traced people whose disappearance is not a consequence of conflict. 547 requests have been opened, most of them positively resolved and information submitted to the enquirers.
During the last year, the tracing service has been intensively working on collection of Ante Mortem data from the families whose loved ones disappeared as a result of the recent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. More than 500 files have been completed and are used in the process of identifying and mortal remains that are exhumed.
The efforts in searching for missing and kidnapped persons on the territory of Kosovo and Metohija who may still be alive have had no results. Although the tracing service could not influence the progress and the results of the searching there is still a fact that the task defined by the mandate has not been accomplished. More than in previous years was done on the training of the staff working in the tracing service. There were four seminars organised for 107 persons.