Mobilizing the Global Community to Find Missing Children

Working together to better understand and respond to the issues of missing and abducted children

The Global Missing Children’s Network (GMCN) brings together like-minded professionals working in the field of child protection and offers them access to a network of specialists and international experts with a goal of uniting the global community find missing children. The GMCN provides a multilingual database featuring photographs of and information about missing children to help law enforcement agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around the globe to recover missing children. ICMEC provides this database and website, and the associated technology, free of charge to those with a mission of protecting children from being abducted or going missing.

Currently, the GMCN is made up of 29 countries across 5 continents. GMCN members work to raise awareness among local, regional and global communities on the issue of missing children. The primary mission of the GMCN is to:

  1. Coordinate and build global awareness of missing and abducted children issues;
  2. Expand the GMCN reach and membership, and share best practices; and
  3. Provide access to a global missing children’s database.

Members are trained and given access to a website interface, which allows them to:

  • CUSTOMIZE their countries’ missing children websites;
  • ACCESS THE DATABASE to display photographs of and information about missing children in their countries; and
  • CREATE POSTERS OF MISSING CHILDREN quickly and easily for public distribution.

In addition to the technology, the GMCN offers members various opportunities to share their experiences, practices, investigative techniques/tools and research projects with each other. For example, members have assisted each other in building rapid emergency child alert systems (e.g. AMBER Alert and Child Rescue Alert) as well as conducted topic-specific research together (e.g. Missing Children’s Research Project).

International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children

Created in 1998, the mission of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) is to make the world safer for children by eradicating child abduction, sexual abuse and exploitation through advocacy, training and collaboration.

ICMEC focuses on programs that have an impact on addressing the complex issues surrounding missing children, child abduction, child sexual abuse, and child sexual exploitation. ICMEC offers support to governments, policymakers, law enforcement, prosecutors, industry, civil society, and others across the globe.

Visit ICMEC for more information.

 

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Membership

By joining the GMCN, you will be a part of a global solution to the issues of missing and abducted children. The GMCN has one goal: to unite and mobilize the global community to find missing children. To do this, we coordinate and build global awareness of the issues; we share best practices, tips and data to support prevention efforts; and we build a community of people working together to change the way the world responds when a child goes missing.

Interested in becoming a member please read the brochure or contact us at GMCN@icmec.org.