2010 Missing Children’s Day:
Global Effort Launched to Help Bring Missing Children Home

On 25 May 2010, nine countries from across four continents joined together to raise awareness of missing children and to strengthen global efforts to find them.

May 25th – International Missing Children’s Day – is a day set aside to commemorate missing children who have been found, to remember those who have been victims of crime, and to continue efforts to find those who are still missing. This year’s focus was on parental/family abduction.

Every day, all around the world, children go missing, and unfortunately, some are taken by those they trust the most: parents and family members. A child who is abducted by a parent or family member may suffer physical, emotional, and psychological harm, and the abduction can have a lasting effect on the child and the family left behind.

Of growing concern is the impact family / parental child abduction has on the child who is removed from his or her familiar surroundings and environment by someone he or she trusts. Abducted children can suffer the alienation of losing contact with their family and friends, miss their educational stability and, in extreme circumstances, may be lied to by the abducting parent. At times children are told that their left-behind families do not love them anymore or that certain family members have died, when in fact they are still living.

Australia, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Romania, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are part of the Global Missing Children’s Network (GMCN), a program of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, which recognizes the need to collaborate on this complex issue on a global level. The program is supported by Motorola Foundation.

To commemorate International Missing Children’s Day on 25 May, participating countries released balloons displaying photos of missing children from around the world in the hope that someone, somewhere, will recognize them. Additional activities were also planned. Brazil hosted a one-day seminar followed by the release of balloons in Brasilia; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) released their annual report on missing children, presented an AirCanada award to a law enforcement officer for extraordinary efforts to recover a missing child, and released balloons at the RCMP Visitor Centre in Ottawa; and the Dutch National Police visited local schools to talk to children about International Missing Children’s Day and to release 500 balloons.

Balloons were also released virtually at www.helpbringthemhome.org.au, an interactive portal developed by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) for the campaign. The AFP also created a powerful 30 second public service announcement, which was distributed throughout participating countries to drive people to the website for further information.

International Missing Children's Day Celebration Athens, Greece, May 2010