Five Steps to Follow When Your Child Goes Missing

Have you ever had the thought of your own child going missing and getting separated with them with no idea of where they are? Is there a parent who at any given time wishes to be separated with their children? Of course, there is none.

Being separated with a child in unclear circumstances might even lead to depression.  Apparently, there are many missing children across Kenya, and some cases have not been solved for decades.

According to the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, eight million children go missing annually which translates to nearly 22,000 children every day around the world. In Kenya the magnitude of cases of missing children is not known.

Hundreds of families in Kenya are in agony searching for their missing children. Not less than 35 cases are reported to police stations across Nairobi every month – that is a child a day in Nairobi alone! Hundreds more cases go unreported or properly recorded. Usually the police reports are made when it is too late.

According to a 2007 UNICEF study, an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 children live or work in the streets and over 200,000 are housed in registered children’s homes across the country.  Some of these are missing children being sought by their families. Yet, without a database to help share and capture comprehensive information about missing and lost children, tracing becomes nearly impossible.

Child welfare experts encourage parents to help their children develop a safety network; identify five adults they might talk to if something bad happens to them, whether it is inappropriate touching (or worse), or other fears about safety. The five adults in this safety network could be parents, a teacher, a family friend, an aunt, a grandparent or the family doctor. Whoever it is, children need to feel safe.

Missing Child Kenya, a community-led portal that works with organizations and individuals’ in the child protection sector and the public to help share information on missing children using various media platforms and increase search efforts at no cost to the affected families.

The goal of Missing Child Kenya is to boost search efforts for missing children by sharing photo posters and alerts to as broad an audience and in the fastest of time as possible.

Missing Child Kenya has listed the following steps that can be followed when a child goes missing: 

1. Do not wait 24 hours, report immediately
2. Get the most recent photo of the child
3. Make a report at the nearest police station
4. Get an OB Number for record and Reference
5. Contact Missing Child Kenya