Common ground was found and differences were discovered at the latest European conference on child abduction alerts, which was held May 19 in Prague, Czech Republic, and featured presentations and participants from 12 countries.
Caroline Humer, Program Manager for the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, was one of the presenters and she was impressed with what was accomplished. “The conference gave many European countries which are still establishing an alert system the opportunity to listen and learn from countries with existing programs,” said Humer. “Many great ideas were exchanged, and many realized the importance of using all technology available to reach as many people as possible.”
Even though European child abduction alert plans are based on the U.S. AMBER Alert Plan, Humer learned some notable differences in some countries: France can only launch an alert when an eye witness can confirm it was an abduction; France does not show the abductor's photo to the public because of possible innocence; and the Netherlands and Greece do not include abduction in their criteria but use the wording “immediate danger” or “life threatening.”
European countries are also facing some of the same issues that American states dealt with while setting up their AMBER Alert plans, such as data sharing (the Schengen Information System is a police database for 25 European countries but more promotion is needed so countries can share information during a cross border alert), data protection (the Czech Republic is working to protect law enforcement data before the country launches its child abduction alert plan), privacy (France is setting up secondary distribution of alerts through the Internet and cell phones but is trying to decide how to protect the victim's privacy after a child has been found), and cancellation (France only considers the alert to be in effect for the first three hours and does not send an automatic notice that an alert has been cancelled).
“The European countries are still struggling to share and cooperate between each other,” added Humer. “They need to build a stronger national database and cross-country relationships to help prevent abductions and protect children. Establishing a common toll-free number 116 000 to report missing children is a beginning and it is operating in 10 European Union countries at the moment.”
The conference included presentations from France, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Greece and the U.S. Participants also came from Czech Republic, Portugal, Spain, Cyprus, Switzerland, Italy and Poland.