Call for EU register of missing children

Date: 12/09/1996

A CAMPAIGN will be launched next week to ensure that details of all missing children in the Union are registered with a centralised European agency.

The initiative follows an outbreak of intense public anger in Belgium after the discovery of the bodies of four abducted children, and growing global concern about the activities of international paedophile networks.

Irish Christian Democrat MEP Mary Banotti is taking the lead in calling for a central register to be established, to operate from within the police intelligence agency, Europol, in The Hague.

“There is a very understandable emphasis on paedophiles and their rings at the present time. However, I have been aware for some time that no accurate information is available on the number of children under 16 who are missing. I am increasingly convinced that we cannot deal with the problem until we have an idea of its extent,” says Banotti.

In July, the European Parliament highlighted the plight of children kidnapped by one parent when a mixed nationality marriage breaks down.

But the recent UN world congress in Stockholm on the commercial sexual exploitation of children and the ongoing search in Belgium for several missing girls have convinced the Union that a far wider problem must be tackled.

Banotti, the Parliament's mediator on abducted children, believes the EU should follow the lead set by the US and establish a European counterpart to the Institute for Missing/ Abducted Children in Washington, which deals with 367,000 disappearances annually.

Such an agency is seen as vital to compile an accurate picture of the scale of the problem and help police forces to trail children who may be quickly moved across national frontiers by their kidnappers.

The Irish MEP will also argue next week that the European Commission should draw up a report on child welfare in the EU.

At the same time, there is a growing demand for specific reference to children's rights to be included in the revised Maastricht Treaty. The issue has only been briefly touched on at the Intergovernmental Conference, but the Irish presidency is expected to confirm to MEPs in Strasbourg next week that it is now under active consideration.

Possible avenues include strengthening the treaty's general non-discrimination provisions or increasing the efficiency of existing police and judicial cooperation.

Ireland has also confirmed that measures to combat the sexual exploitation of children will feature prominently when justice and home affairs ministers meet in Dublin on 26 and 27 September. It intends to use the Europol Convention and other, as yet unspecified, conventions to stamp out what it terms “this particularly evil and cruel modern-day form of slavery”.