Time is crucial when searching for a missing person, especially children and teenagers. For specialists who work in the area, the immediate search is a fundamental tool to increase the chances of finding a missing person. Since 2005, Law No. 11,259 provides for the immediate investigation of the disappearance of a child or adolescent. This means that the competent bodies must send an alert to ports, airports, Highway Police and national and international transport companies as soon as they are notified. It is not necessary to wait 24 hours for the family to file the police report, according to the norm, known as the Law of Immediate Search. At the Seminar on Public Policies to Combat Disappearance, promoted this Monday (27) by the Ministries of Human Rights and Citizenship (MDHC) and Justice and Public Security (MJSP), participants warned that the law has not been complied with in the country. “There is the police culture of 24 hours, 48 hours of waiting. This is a myth that was created”, said the researcher on human trafficking and exploitation of children, adolescents and women Marcelo Neumann. Seminar on Public Policies to Combat Disappearance of Children and Adolescents. YouTube/Reproduction The speakers also addressed the need to send real-time alerts to all states. “We have to have an alert system, in conjunction with all units of the Federation. It is not possible for a child and a teenager to leave our country. Get companies and government agencies to quickly report a child abduction. It already happens in the United States, and Brazil is lagging behind in terms of disclosure”, highlighted Luiz Henrique Oliveira, manager of the SOS Missing Children program. Founder of Mães da Sé, a group that has been fighting for the search for missing children and adolescents for over 20 years, Ivanise Esperidião defends that transport companies, such as airlines, intensify the verification of documentation of minors when boarding. Investigation A representative of the Ministry of Justice’s National Secretariat for Public Security, Leandro Arbogast informed that a reference guide for the investigation of missing persons is in the final stages. One of the goals is to standardize police records. “We are going to meet with the MDHC in the next few days [Ministério dos Direitos Humanos e Cidadania] to deal with the recomposition of the management committee of the national policy to search for missing persons. We ran a successful campaign to collect genetic material and, through that, we identified 288 people,” he said. The registration of the police report is the initial step in the search and location of a missing person and must be done at a police station. Family problem In Brazil, on average, 40,000 to 50,000 children and adolescents disappear each year. One out of every three missing people in the country is a child or teenager. Despite the number considered alarming, researcher Simone Pinto, who coordinates an international network of studies on disappearances, pointed out that most of Brazilian society and public administrators face the disappearance of a person as a family problem. Prejudice, according to her, favors the underreporting of cases. “Many family members don’t even report it, they decide to look for it on their own, in the surroundings. It is necessary to drop this myth that it is a family problem, it is a social problem”, she stressed. The national secretary for the Rights of Children and Adolescents at the MDHC, Ariel de Castro Alves, said that the seminar aims to show that disappearances cannot be minimized. “We continue debating this agenda with various civil society institutions and families, as we know that the discussion is still quite invisible. Therefore, we need to build policies to confront disappearance, ”he said. *Collaborated by Pedro Lacerda
Agência Brasil
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