The emergency of COVID-19 does not make us forget how much attention and dedication children need, especially when they are outside their protected environment and far from their reference adults.
When a child disappears, the situations to be addressed are different: escapes from the home of teenagers, the abduction of children - even very young - from a parent, foreign minors who move away from the reception institutions and other more different cases in which they can run serious dangers. All situations in which a minor disappears, whatever the circumstances, must be managed without delay and without neglecting any possibility of research.
The guidelines issued by the Extraordinary Commissioner of the Government for Missing Persons, the provincial research plans adopted by the Prefects constitute, in this sense, a solid reference.
The need to identify increasingly effective intervention tools to protect minors at risk has prompted the State Police to develop collaborative relationships with important international organizations particularly active in the dissemination of cutting-edge technologies that allow, if deemed useful for the localization of the minor, the direct involvement of citizens.
This is why, since 15 March 2000, the State Police have joined the ICMEC - International Center for Missing and Exploited Children international network (which now has 30 countries) by activating the Italian site for missing children - en.globalmissingkids.org.
Cases of missing minors are published on the website, managed by the Central Anticrime Directorate of the State Police, for which the Offices that carry out research on the territory deem it appropriate to confer a broad media impact. The insertion of the case is decided through assessments shared with the judicial authority and the parent. For “long term” cases it is also possible to insert age progressed images.
Also this year the State Police adheres to international initiatives on the subject.
In partnership with ICMEC, it collaborates in the awareness campaign for the International Day for Missing Children, named for 2020 Football Cares / Football united to celebrate May 25th also launched with the support of FIFA and the European Club Association (ECA). Over 90 clubs worldwide have joined, including - in Italy - Atalanta, Inter, Juventus, Fiorentina, Lazio, Milan, AS Roma (the latter promoter of the campaign with ICMEC) who will publish the video on their social networks created for the occasion, also available on the Twitter account of the State Police.
In Europe it participates in the campaign organized by AMBER ALERT EUROPE. With a representative of the Central Anti-Crime Directorate, the State Police are part of the Police Experts Network on Missing Persons (PEN-MP) network connected to AMBER ALERT EUROPE (in which 21 countries participate), active in supporting the spread of the so-called . of "rapid alert" in Europe.
This year the campaign is aimed particularly at teenagers, who are statistically the most conspicuous group of minors who disappear. Due to the restrictions due to the COVID-19 emergency, the children can, in fact, suffer acute situations of discomfort, which could lead to the search for "virtual" escape routes or result in actual home escapes. This is why the campaign was focused this year on the dangers of the network.
A growing number of adolescent and pre-adolescent children share moments of their own life, even intimate, with friends or presumed ones, on social platforms freely accessible even by attackers.
The young age of users, associated with a poor education on the pitfalls that could hide online browsing, exposes our kids to the concrete risk of ending up in the network of predators able to steal their trust and lead them on insidious and sometimes dead-end terrain .
AMBER ALERT EUROPE has a video for this product aimed specifically at prevention for young people available in Italian at https://ftp.amberalert.eu/video/may25/2020/italy-dont-be-an-easy-catch .mp4
The Postal Police is also part of the European network with its specialization in investigating crime committed online and with its intense prevention activity in schools.
Among the crimes investigated by the Postal, particular attention is given to grooming, that is, to the solicitation of minors online for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
Hence the need to increase the awareness of minors and their parents by providing effective prevention tools that can allow children to navigate safely and consciously, providing for the possibility of resorting to law enforcement agencies, if they feel the need, also through on-line Commissariat website https://commissariatodips.it/
The synergy between the institutions led to the preparation of the third edition of the information brochure dedicated to May 25, available on the institutional website, created with the precious intervention of the Extraordinary Commissioner for Missing Persons. Finally, we remind you that in addition to emergency numbers and emergency services - 113 and 112 NUE - the single European number 116000 is a service with a social value dedicated to missing children, entrusted by the Ministry of the Interior to the management of “SOS Il Telefono Azzurro - National Line for the Prevention of Child Abuse ".