Posted on June 22, 2016
MORE that 50 government and non-governmental agencies and organizations are participating in a specialized training workshop on missing children, being funded by the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC) and Facebook, in partnership with local advocacy organization, Hear the Children’s Cry.
The three-day workshop, which is entitled ‘Investigative and Preventative Response to Missing Children: An interactive workshop for law enforcement’, commenced on Monday at the Terra Nova Hotel in Kingston.
“Now, here is the stark reality: Since the death of Ananda Dean eight years ago, the cases of missing children have increased exponentially, as high as 70 per cent. When we began gathering and analyzing the data eight years ago, there were certain parishes in Jamaica where there were no cases of missing children; today, the children are going missing from every single parish,” founder of Hear the Children’s Cry, Betty-Ann Blaine said in her address.
She said that, on average, 150 Jamaican children are reported missing every month, with this figure sometimes increasing or decreasing in some months. She added that in 2015, almost 2,000 children were reported missing and since the first three months of this year, there have already been 646 reports of missing children.
“When you look across Jamaica, our statistics are really shocking with the number of children that go missing every year and not just missing but the number of children killed, harmed, neglected, malnourished — all the adverse experiences that you can think about where children are concerned, we have come across them and so solutions are urgently needed,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Novellete Grant stated.
“There are some parishes in Jamaica that also need special attention because there seems to be a concentration of missing children there. When you look at St Catherine as a parish, you recognise that there is a big problem there; Westmoreland and St. James also have big problems. The west is usually underserved in many of the solutions that we as a nation come up with, and I hope this workshop will try to find ways and means to extend work in the west,” Grant continued.
According to former FBI agent and director of trust and security at Facebook, Emily Vacher, the Internet is a powerful tool, as it has no boundaries and so, bringing it into the mix can actually change the course of an investigation.
“They say it takes a village to raise a child, well it takes a village to protect one as well and Facebook is very proud to be one very small part of that village. We will bring our resources to the children of Jamaica and, during this week, one of things I’m going to talk about is the Amber Alert we use in the US that has since been adapted to use on
Facebook….and a lot of our conversation this week will centre around how we can bring this technology to Jamaica,” Vacher said in her presentation.
As it relates to the global challenges regarding missing children, director of the Global Missing Children’s Network at ICMEC, Caroline Humer, stated that one main challenge is that of definition when it comes to missing children.
“What is considered missing? The definition by country, parish or jurisdiction can be different and so, how can we then know the extent of it and respond to it when the definition changes on a regular basis depending on who you talk to? So one of the challenges is that we are not always talking about the same issue when you’re speaking about missing children; cases include runaways, peer pressure, trafficking, and parental abduction. Missing should be all- inclusive, but a lot of times, depending on which region you are, that is not always the case,” Humer stated.
The workshop was expected to discuss areas such as searching for missing children and long-term missing investigations, among other areas.
In addition to search and rescue strategies, the training agenda was expected to deal with legislation, both domestic and international, as it relates to missing children, as well as the role of families and communities in addressing the problem.
Posted on May 11, 2016
Over the past six years, the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) has brought together more than 20 countries from around the world to commemorate International Missing Children’s Day on May 25. Through unified national events, countries bring global attention to missing children – those who have been found as well as those who have not yet been recovered.
Every day, all around the world, children go missing. They may be runaways or missing for unknown reasons, victims of family or non-family abductions, or they may simply be lost or missing with a “benign” explanation. While the majority of children who are reported missing return on their own after a short period of time, the longer a child is missing, the more vulnerable he or she becomes. Regardless of the circumstances, children who go missing are vulnerable to sexual exploitation, forced employment, physical and emotional violence as well as criminal activity. In the United Kingdom, on average 8% of runaway children experience some form of sexual assault while missing.[1] In the United States, it is estimated that 1 in 6 runaways reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children will end up a victim of child sex trafficking.[2] The longer a child is missing, the higher the risk he or she faces.
“We, as responsible adults, should be aware of the issues that put children at risk and do all we can to help keep them as safe as possible,” says Ambassador Maura Harty (ret.), President and CEO of ICMEC. “We all need to be champions working together to protect each and every child. One child harmed is one child too many.”
Every person has a role to play in the protection of children, providing them with a safer environment that insulates them against these risks. This year, in honor of International Missing Children’s Day, ICMEC’s social media platforms will focus on highlighting the issues of missing children and child abduction, and the ways in which we all can contribute to bringing missing children home. This month-long campaign will provide safety tips for parents and children, and showcase the good work of ICMEC’s 23-member-strong Global Missing Children’s Network (GMCN).
To learn more about the GMCN, please visit: www.globalmissingkids.org; to learn more about ICMEC’s child safety lease visit http://globalmissingkids.org/resources/child-safety-prevention/.
ABOUT MISSING CHILDREN’S DAY
On May 25, 1979, 6-year-old Etan Patz disappeared from a street corner in his New York neighborhood while walking to school. A photo of Etan generated national and international media attention and became a symbol of the missing children movement. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed May 25 as National Missing Children’s Day. As public awareness of missing and abducted children increased globally, observance of May 25 as Missing Children’s Day expanded outside the United States. In 2001, May 25 was first observed as International Missing Children’s Day. In 2009, ICMEC began promoting a unified global message, focusing on the member countries of the Global Missing Children’s Network. The symbol for International Missing Children’s Day is the forget-me-not flower.
ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR MISSING & EXPLOITED CHILDREN
The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit organization working to make the world a safer place for all children by eradicating child abduction, sexual abuse and exploitation. Since its inception in 1998, ICMEC has: trained over 10,000 law enforcement officers from 117 countries; worked with governments in more than 100 countries to refine or implement laws against child pornography; increased global participation in International Missing Children’s Day, which has been commemorated in more than 20 countries across 6 continents since 2001; and created a 23-member Global Missing Children’s Network. ICMEC is headquartered in the United States, with regional representation in Brazil and Singapore. For more information go to www.icmec.org.
[1] Parents & Abducted Children Together (2005), Every Five Minutes – A Review of the Available Data on Missing Children in the UK, Page 62
[2] http://www.missingkids.com/1in6
Posted on December 1, 2015
Members of the Global Missing Children’s Network have come together every year since 2008 to share best practices, newly-identified trends and research projects focused on strengthening the response to missing and abducted children.
Over the years, the Annual GMCN Conference has provided a forum to discuss such topics as: the importance of common definitions; runaways; risk-assessment criteria; reporting mechanisms; international parental abduction; and the benefits – and challenges – of law enforcement and NGOs working together.
The Annual GMCN is hosted in-country by a GMCN member. For the last five years, the Annual GMCN Conference has been made possible through funding from the Motorola Solutions Foundation.
To date, Annual GMCN Conferences have been held in: Alexandria, Virginia, USA; Travemünde, Germany; Sydney, Australia; Brasilia, Brazil; London, United Kingdom; and Warnsveld, The Netherland.
This year’s conference will take place in Singapore in December 2015.
Posted on August 31, 2015
ICMEC, with the help of GMCN members, published the Model Missing Child Framework in August 2015. The Framework provides a 12-point outline of what laws and policies are needed to develop a comprehensive missing child response. It will help government, law enforcement and NGOs to understand the necessary resources and tools needed.
The Model Missing Child Framework is available in the following language.
Arabic
Chinese
English
French
Portuguese
Spanish
Thai
Posted on December 1, 2014
The 6th Annual Global Missing Children’s Network (GMCN) Conference took place 3-5 December 2014 in Warnsveld, The Netherlands.
The Annual GMCN Conference was attended by 22 countries, with new member country Serbia participating for the first time. National Police Netherlands provided the host venue at the Executive Management Academy.
Topics of focus included DNA databases, mediation in cases of parental abduction and how to best work with media. Groningen University presented initial findings of a three-year research study on the impact missing persons cases have on those left searching, and a representative from Google explained the issue of privacy when publicizing missing children cases.
- (GMCN Participants from Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Mexico,
- South Korea and Spain)
- The 6th Annual GMCN Conference was sponsored by Motorola Solutions Foundation.
