Spanish Centre for the Missing organises Global Missing Children's Network International Conference

The conference, which was opened on Wednesday by the Deputy Government Representative in Cordoba, Rafaela Valenzuela Jiménez, and the Director of the ICMEC, Caroline Humer, is being attended by specialists from 23 Member States of the ICMEC alongside experts from the State law enforcement agencies and regional police forces, people from civil society and relatives of missing persons, in order to increase knowledge in the field of missing children.

The meeting will allow attendees to share the advancements in systems for establishing the level of risk following a disappearance, review long-term disappearances and more effectively deal with the disappearance of unaccompanied child migrants. The study of real cases is playing a major role at the event due to the educational nature of this activity.

Furthermore, discussions will take place on aspects aimed at improving instruments for requesting, activating and operating the system of alerts on suspected missing children that can be issued beyond Spanish borders.

The event will pay special attention to the establishment of cooperation channels, especially when undertaking joint training activities on protecting missing children and raising awareness about the importance of communication alerts.

As regards Spain, the meeting will foster greater international awareness about the Spanish Centre for the Missing and allow for the implementation of training programmes aimed at members of the Spanish National Police, the Spanish Guardia Civil, the Basque Ertzaintza, the Provincial Police Force of Navarre and the Catalan Mossos d'Esquadra.

Training

The conference includes a number of different training activities, such as a workshop specifically targeted at the State law enforcement agencies, and a meeting with relatives of missing children and associations for missing children.

The meeting with relatives will be attended by staff from the ANAR Foundation, the INTER SOS Association, the QSDglobal Foundation and the SOSDESAPARECIDOS Association, as well as relatives of Spanish missing children and members of the State law enforcement agencies, the Spanish Centre for the Missing and the Global Missing Children's Network (GMCN).

The ICMEC is an organisation that specialises in offering assistance in finding missing children, reducing child sexual exploitation and preventing the victimisation of children. It operates in partnership with governments, the academic world, State law enforcement agencies and associations representing these sectors. Its goal is to offer a broad range of practical measures aimed at protecting children. It uses the Global Missing Children's Network (GMCN) to do so, an organisation set up in 1998 as a joint programme between the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the ICMEC. A total of 28 countries are currently members of this network, including Spain, which signed an agreement between the Spanish State Secretariat of Security and the ICMEC on 9 May.

The GMCN also has a multilingual database containing images and information on missing children from around the world.

Additional information can be found at:

https://www.icmec.org/
http://www.missingkids.com/home

Non official translation