On Monday, January 29th, Bulgaria launched its national AMBER Alert system to quickly recover missing children. The Bulgarian AMBER Alert enables law enforcement agencies to send out a notification with a recent photo and information about a missing child to all Facebook app users within a 200 km radius from the place where the child went missing. This highly increases the chances of a missing child, whose life and health are at risk, to be found.
Bulgaria is the 18th EU country to implement an AMBER Alert system. Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Czech Republic and the UK already have a national child alert system in place.
“I would like to congratulate Bulgarian law enforcement with their brand-new AMBER Alert. AMBER Alert Europe is looking forward to welcoming Bulgarian law enforcement in our Police Expert Network on Missing Children as well”, says Frank Hoen, founder of AMBER Alert Europe.
Bulgaria takes action to save more missing children
The establishment of AMBER Alert Bulgaria follows the country’s earlier commitment to improve the search for missing children. In 2016, Bulgaria was one of nine Central-Eastern European countries that signed the Joint Declaration to involve more citizens in the search for a missing child and to cooperate more closely with police from the neighbouring countries on missing children cases.