The worldwide impact of AMBER Alerts finally hit home for NCMEC President Ernie Allen when he met the president and first lady of France three years ago. Allen was about to speak to President Jacques Chirac when his wife Bernadette told Allen, “Last week we recovered two French missing children through the use of your AMBER Alert.”
A total of nine countries outside the United States now have AMBER Alert Programs: Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium and Switzerland. Plans are also underway for child abduction alerts in Mexico and Italy, and a European Child Alert Automated System is being developed to coordinate alerts among partner countries for cross-border activations.
“Many countries are looking to the United States for advice on AMBER Alerts,” said Caroline Humer, International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC) Program Director.
Humer oversaw the International Workshop at the 2010 National AMBER Alert Symposium. In Canada, Alberta launched the first AMBER Alert Program in 2003, and each province now has its own policy; in 2010, Canada started using wireless AMBER Alerts, and several provinces also use Facebook to distribute alerts. In Greece, the child abduction alert, called “The Smile of the Child,” was launched in 2007 and is similar to the AMBER Alert Program; ICMEC has provided training, and a grant from the European Union was used to develop automatic alerts. In the Netherlands, the AMBER Alert Program was started in 2008 with alerts being distributed to broadcasters, Short Message Service (SMS), e-mail, billboards, and the border patrol, and in 2010 the Netherlands also started using the social networks Twitter, Igoogle, Facebook, and Hyves to distribute alerts. In Switzerland, the AMBER Alert Program was started in 2010 in response to a child who was murdered one year earlier; federal police oversee the program, but local police decide to initiate alerts, and each alert is quickly translated into English, French, Italian, and German.
Humer noted that Interpol has been helpful in pushing the AMBER Alert Program throughout Europe.