Yesterday thousands of balloons, each containing the picture and name of a missing child in France, were released next to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. This is something that happened all over the world on the 25th of May -- and I can only hope that there was more interest generated and more attention given to this very important and very sad issue of our times. From the little coverage that I saw on the event in Paris, it seemed to me that the world is too busy, too rushed, too flustered, too overwhelmed already with wrongs and worries and woes to pay much attention to the hundreds of thousands of children that go missing every year.
25 May was proclaimed International Missing Children’s Day by the General Secretariat of the European Federation for Missing and Sexually Exploited Children, and is to be a day dedicated internationally to bring the attention to the children that go missing around us.
Origin of the day May 25
On May 25, 1979, six years old Etan Patz was abducted in New York. He was never seen again. Over the following years, different organizations began to highlight this date, but it was not until 1983 that the President of the United States declared May 25 "Missing Children's Day". This day has also been commemorated in Canada since 1986 and has had since then, an international dimension.
Purpose of the day May 25
The main purpose of the International Missing Children’s Day is to encourage the population to think about all the children who have been reported missing in Europe and around the world and to spread a message of hope and solidarity on an international scale to parents without any news of their children and who do not know where their child is or what has become of him/her. The purpose is also a reflection about prevention strategies to promote at the European institutions and to implement in close collaboration with the authorities in charge of education and social policy, justice and police. The ultimate objective for this day is to be commemorated every year in all the countries members of the European Federation for Missing and Sexually
Exploited Children and, as far as possible, in many other countries of the world.
Symbol of the day
The forget-me-not was the original symbol for the day, but this year it was decided to release hundreds of thousands of balloons, each containing the photograph and details of a missing child.
The horror of this growing phenomenon of our times is that it is believed that the vast majority of missing children now are taken by paedophile rings and sex slave syndicates. Ironically this is something that had been going on a large scale in Africa and in Asian countries for many decades, and although there were concerned people who tried to get action on behalf of these children, nothing much was ever achieved. Then, in 1983, when a child in New York went missing and the parents refused to give up their fight, it was President Reagan who proclaimed the day a special day dedicated to missing children.
This year, in particular here in Europe, after the disappearance of little Madeleine 22 days ago in Portugal, one would have expected a record number of people to turn up. But -- once again, this is a case of 'what does not affect me, has no effect on me'. Looking at the relatively poor turnout at the Paris event, one can only hope that everyone who could have been there and was not, will never ever have to go through the indescribable anguish of having a child go missing............“…In the USA a child goes missing every 40 seconds, over 2,100 per day
In excess of 800,000 children are reported missing each year
Another 500,000 go missing without ever being reported…”
---The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)
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