War and conflict can have a devastating effect on families, separating members sometimes indefinitely.
But one century-old service has proved there are ways to help people reconnect -- and that it is never too late to find lost loved ones.
Growing up in Germany, Christel Waters remembers the well-loved photo of a little girl her father kept tucked in his wallet.
As a child, she did not question her father's explanation that the child in the photograph was his sister's daughter.
But as she grew older, she began to wonder if there was more to the story.
"In his wallet, he had this little photograph. And no matter how many wallets he had throughout those years, this little photograph would always go into his wallet."
It was not until last year, though, that Christel Waters, who now lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, realised the true significance of the girl in the photograph.
That realisation came when she received a request for correspondence, via the Red Cross, from a man called Alexandr.
She now knows that man is her nephew.
And she now knows his mother, whose image is depicted in the photograph, is Nadia -- her half-sister.
Nadia lives in Ukraine, and the women have never met, but they chat often, usually over Skype.
They communicate with the help of Alexandr, who acts as a translator, and sometimes in German, a language they share.
Through ongoing conversations, Christel Waters says, the two sisters are slowly piecing together how their father became separated from his first wife and child in World War Two.
"He joined the Polish Army, and then in the first week of the war, of course, Russia was coming in one way, Germany was coming in another way, and his platoon was captured in the first week."
He survived the war working as a captive farmhand, where he was able to sneak milk and cream from the cows he tended for extra nutrition.
Then the war ended.
Christel Waters recalls what happened next.
"After the war, Dad actually had written to his family in Poland, but, because there was no answer -- he never got a return reply -- so he assumed that his whole family was dead."
He eventually met Christel's mother, and the family moved to Australia.
But he always kept Nadia close to his heart.
And on their latest Skype call, Christel Waters was able to show her the proof -- the photograph their father kept in his wallet.
The women reconnected with the help of a 100 year-old tracing service run by the Red Cross.
The Red Cross's Katherine Wright explains how tracing officers work to find loved ones lost by conflict and displacement.
"We know, because we look at the data that talks about where people travel to if they've escaped conflict in a particular country. And, sometimes, it really is a guessing game."
Last year, the Australian team worked to link almost two thousand people.
They searched for missing family members in Sri Lanka, Somalia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Hungary and many other countries.
The service also recently helped a woman named Sylvia find her sister.
She was not much older than her daughter is now when she fled Burundi due to civil war.
But she had lasting memories of her older sibling.
"My sister, she pick up me to go to visit her in her house, I remember, yes."
Sylvia spent the next 43 years wondering where her sister was.
Now she knows her sister is alive and living in a refugee camp in Tanzania.
"I was talking with her, and I asked her the name of her, 'Oh, what is your name?' 'My name is Yogeri.' 'Ah, okay!' Then they told me, 'It's your sister.' I said, 'Really? Oh, my God.' I said, 'Oh, thank you, God."
The Red Cross finds some resolution for families in around 60 per cent of cases.
For the sisters Christel and Nadia, the discovery was bittersweet.
It was too late for their father to find his lost little girl, too late, says Christel, for Nadia to track down her father.
"I wish Dad was here, though. It's sad. Sad for him. It's sadness for Nadia, too, because she lost her dad. She lost her dad, you know, at ... I think she was two years of age."
But it's not too late for two sisters to begin a new journey together.
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