Partners who make a difference
These are people or organisations that support us on a daily basis because together we are more efficient when it comes to a missing child, since every minute counts.
Non-governmental organisations
Child Focus
As the proprietor of the 116 000 hotline number, the Child Focus Foundation is committed to the fight against sexual exploitation and the disappearance of minors in Belgium.
Missing Children Europe
Missing Children Europe is the umbrella organisation in charge of coordinating and harmonising 116 000 hotlines in Europe.
This organisation works to ensure that each country in Europe has adequate procedures in place to provide qualitative monitoring of calls on hotlines.
Missing Children Europe supports its network with information on best practices and collects data for statistical purposes.
The foundation also shares its publications on the phenomenon of missing minors and provides logistical support to enable emerging organisations to disseminate awareness videos and make themselves known.
ICMEC
This international network fights against the sexual exploitation of children, child pornography and child abduction.
The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children network is based in the United States and brings together organisations from 29 countries. Its mission is to identify gaps in the protection systems for minors around the world and provide the logistical tools to fill them.
This NGO notably financed the development of the "GMCNgine" for the benefit of the NGOs in its network. The "GMCNgine" is a search engine with facial recognition software to identify images of missing children and track child pornography on the Internet. It also allows targeted missing persons’ reports to be edited in the Google ads of computers connected within 100 km of the location from which the child has gone missing.
As a member of this international network, we are the only ones in Switzerland to have this tool leveraging the latest technology.
SSI
The International Social Service supports children separated from their families as a result of cross-border migration or displacement.
Bringing together NGOs and interconnected partners from more than 100 countries, ISS works to restore links within separated families by offering them socio-legal and psychological assistance.
This organisation is also active in the fields of child protection and rights, children's policy development and research.
Missing Children Switzerland and ISS regularly collaborate in cross-border parental abduction situations.
Public partners
Swiss police
Collaboration in the event of missing minors. The police guide parents to us for professional emotional care and to support their search endeavours.
In the event of disappearances, it is crucial to establish contact with the inspectors in charge of the investigation, in order to facilitate and consolidate the work of caring for families. It would be desirable for police to inform parents that they can receive support via the hotline. Like the police, we must be in the right place at the right time to accomplish our mission.
All the police forces in French-speaking Switzerland have welcomed this collaboration for the benefit of parents and children in distress, with the exception of the Canton of Geneva.
Our communication should currently be passed on by more than 1,500 police officers in the French-speaking region.
Federal Police
Are responsible for collecting statistics from cantonal police forces.
In the CRC 2015 report on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United Nations made recommendations in which it is stated that Switzerland must improve the collection of statistics on vulnerable persons. We are trying to mobilise Fedpol to establish a statistical model designed to measure the extent of the phenomenon. At present, it is not possible for Fedpol to distinguish missing children in the figures provided by the cantonal police forces.
Institutions
Collaboration for the support of parents and work on the theme of youth disappearances.
Institutions for young people are largely affected by the phenomenon of runaways.
With the help of the educational teams we are investigating the phenomenon of runaways in shelters.
