On March 14th, Lithuania, in cooperation with Facebook, launched its national AMBER Alert system to quickly recover missing children. The Lithuanian AMBER Alert enables law enforcement to send a notification with a recent photo and information about a missing child to all Facebook app users within a 200 km radius from the location where the child was last seen. AMBER Alert Europe member Missing Persons’ Families Support Centre (MPFSC) is one of the initiators of AMBER Alert Lithuania.
Lithuania is the first Baltic country and the 19th EU member state to implement an AMBER Alert system. Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and the UK already have a national child alert system in place. Earlier this year, Bulgaria also launched its national AMBER Alert system.
“We know that when a child is missing, the most valuable thing we can do is get information out to the public as quickly as possible. By getting the right information to the right people, at the right time, through AMBER Alerts on Facebook, we hope to help reunite missing children with their families faster”, says Emily Vacher, Director of Trust and Safety at Facebook.
Missing Persons’ Families Support Centre
During the launch, Natalja Kurčinskaja, Director of MPFSC, also received the Courageous Woman Award for her work on missing children. “We are extremely excited to join the AMBER Alert Facebook system, which will help to engage more community members in critical cases of missing children”, says Kurčinskaja. Last year, Missing Persons’ Families Support Centre joined AMBER Alert Europe to help reach zero missing children in Europe.
