With University College Cork joining as our hundredth organisation, AMBER Alert Europe brings together partners across 29 countries. Together, we work to prevent disappearances, support investigations and strengthen protection for children. A central challenge guides this cooperation: a child can be in serious danger before anyone knows whether a crime has been committed. Europe’s response must be able to recognise and address that danger.
We warmly welcome University College Cork and thank every organisation and individual who has helped build this network.
Cork’s arrival strengthens the connection between research and practice. Professor Barry O’Sullivan of University College Cork joined our Scientific Advisory Board in May 2026. His expertise in artificial intelligence and responsible technology illustrates what academic cooperation brings: knowledge that can help investigators use new methods effectively and responsibly.
Cooperation built before an emergency
Our experience began with AMBER Alert in the Netherlands in 2008. Police decided when to issue an alert; businesses, media and citizens helped spread it. We founded AMBER Alert Europe in 2013 to strengthen cooperation across borders.
In 2018, baby Hannah was found in Germany after a Dutch AMBER Alert. Witnesses abroad provided information that helped police solve the abduction. Relationships established before the emergency made a difference when time mattered.
We applied that lesson to cooperation between professionals. The police network we initiated in 2014 became the Council-recognised Police Expert Network on Missing Persons (PEN-MP) in 2019, helping officers connect with colleagues across national borders.
We also initiated and developed the Common European Approach in cooperation with PEN-MP. It brings police experience together with research, civil society, policymakers and public participation. The purpose is practical: recognise danger earlier, improve the search and address the circumstances that put a child at risk.
Turning knowledge into help for investigators
Police experience reveals questions that research can help answer. Our International Cold Case Analysis Project (ICCAP), the world’s largest international cold-case programme, brings universities and police specialists together to examine real investigations. More than 1,900 students have reviewed over sixty cold cases, contributing fresh analysis and possible leads.
In 2025, an ICCAP team won the Dutch Police and Public Prosecution Service hackathon for the second consecutive year. An offline AI model helped the team review thousands of pages within six hours and identify leads for investigators to verify.
That knowledge also needs to reach professionals handling today’s cases. Through our cooperation with CEPOL, the EU agency for law enforcement training, we bring expertise on risk assessment, investigations and return interviews to police officers across Europe.
Making European policy work in practice
The difficulties encountered in practice also shape our policy work. With the Slovenian Presidency of the council of the EU, Slovenian police and PEN-MP, we contributed to the Council’s 2021 conclusions on strengthening cross-border cooperation on missing persons.
One concrete example of our legislative advocacy concerns preventive alerts in the Schengen Information System. We helped put these alerts on the European agenda and worked with successive Council presidencies towards their inclusion in the revised system. They allow authorities to take protective action, under defined conditions, before a child at risk of abduction or other serious harm is taken abroad.
We also advocated for searches for missing persons and unidentified remains within Prüm II, including outside criminal investigations, and for strictly controlled use of biometric identification to find missing people under the AI Act.
These efforts share a purpose: ensuring that authorities have lawful and proportionate ways to act when someone needs protection.
Responding to danger, guided by fundamental rights
An unresolved difficulty remains. Access to protective measures and investigative tools can depend on how a disappearance is classified and where it occurs. The absence of evidence of a crime does not establish that a child is safe.
With Professor Koen Lemmens, we brought this issue before the European Parliament’s LIBE and JURI committees in 2024. Drawing on his analysis of the right to life, we argued that protection must respond to the danger a child faces, including when a disappearance has not been linked to a crime.
When authorities know, or ought to know, that a missing child faces a real and immediate risk to life, they must take reasonable measures within their powers to protect that child. This duty to protect life must translate into practice. Legal expertise should help officers fulfil it promptly, using lawful and proportionate measures with appropriate safeguards for privacy and other fundamental rights.
Protecting children before and after a disappearance
Understanding the circumstances behind disappearances also helps us work to prevent them.
Our 2026 Home Should Be Safe campaign was launched across twenty countries in fourteen languages. Informed by research and reviewed by experts, it helps adults recognise signs of domestic abuse and act before a child feels compelled to run away.
Finding a child must also lead to understanding what happened. Return interviews can reveal abuse, exploitation or other dangers that require attention. That knowledge can help protect the child from disappearing again.
Taking the next step together
At the European Commission’s DG HOME/CERIS event in March 2025, we called for sustained European research bringing police, scientists, civil society and EU institutions together. Many priorities we have advanced with our partners are now reflected in the European research agenda on missing persons. This creates an opportunity to build on existing experience, test approaches together and establish what works in practice.
One hundred organisations bring different skills, perspectives and national experiences to that task. Their value grows when those contributions inform each other and reach the people protecting children every day.
We invite police authorities, researchers, policymakers, civil society and technology partners to contribute their expertise and help take this work forward. Every contribution should bring us closer to a child protected before they disappear, found sooner when they do, and kept safe afterwards. That is the purpose of our cooperation, and the ambition behind #ZeroMissingKids.
For questions, please contact us at: info@amberalert.eu
