May 25 marks International Missing Children's Day, celebrated around the globe to attract public attention to the problem of protecting children from abduction, difficult life situations and illegal exploitation
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th May, 2019) May 25 marks International Missing Children's Day, celebrated around the globe to attract public attention to the problem of protecting children from abduction, difficult life situations and illegal exploitation.
For the first time, the idea to devote a special day to the problem of missing children appeared in the United States. On this day in 1979, a six-year-old boy, Etan Patz, disappeared on his way to school in New York, and was never found. In 1983, four years after the child's disappearance, then-US President Ronald Reagan proclaimed May 25 National Missing Children's Day.
In 1984, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was founded in the United States.
The US initiative was supported in Europe. In 1998, the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC) was established. It was officially opened in April, 1999.
In 1998, the Global Missing Children's Network (GMCN), a multilingual database with photos and information about missing children from around the world, was created at the ICMEC's initiative.
Currently, the GMCN has 29 member countries, including Russia.
In 2001, thanks to ICMEC's efforts, May 25 was celebrated as the International Missing Children's Day for the first time.
The image of the forget-me-not flower is the symbol of the International Missing Children's Day.
In 2012, Russia for the first time officially joined the tradition of celebrating the International Missing Children's Day.
According to ICMEC, every year, 25,000 children are reported missing in Australia, 40,000 children go missing in Brazil, and an estimated 96,000 young people are reported missing in India. There were over 42,000 missing children reports in Canada in 2018. In Europe, hundreds of thousands of children are reported missing each year: more than 33,000 children were reported missing in Spain in 2018; over 80,000 go missing annually in the United Kingdom. There were more than 420,000 reports of missing children in the United States in 2018. In 2015, about 45,000 children were reported missing in Russia.
The Russian National Monitoring Assistance Center for Missing and Exploited Children was established in December, 2014, in order to assist in uniting the efforts of state authorities, public organizations and citizens in the search for missing children, as well as to prevent children from getting lost and leaving their homes.
According to experts from the Russian National Monitoring Assistance Center for Missing and Exploited Children, between 7,000 and 10,000 children are reported missing each year, more than 2,000 of them are infants. Approximately 1,500 children every year remain missing.
Moreover, only about 10 percent of cases of children disappearances in Russia are connected with crimes or accidents, most often they just run away from their homes or childcare facilities.
In most cases, a person can be found within three days after his or her disappearance. If it was impossible to establish the location of the missing person within three days, then the person is declared missing.
Rescuers, police and volunteers look for the missing people. There are about 140 organizations in Russia that are involved in searching for missing people.
If a child is lost, volunteers recommend not to panic, not to waste time, but to act.
It is necessary to make a detailed description of the clothes, shoes and personal belongings of the child at the time of the disappearance and to include distinguishing marks and a manner characteristic in the description.
It is also necessary to find the latest photo of the missing person and bring it to the nearest police station as soon as possible, to write down the registration number of the report and the phone number of the employee who took it, in order to be able to provide new details.
If the child has a mobile phone, which number is registered in one of the parents' Names, it is necessary to request a transcript of the last calls from the cellular provider.
It is recommended to call everyone who may know the whereabouts of the child, to pay close attention to those who saw him shortly before his disappearance, to call the volunteers and involve as many people � relatives, friends and acquaintances � to the search as possible.
