China’s Ministry of Public Security’s Missing Children Alert Platform. (Photo/the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security)
A missing children alert platform rolled out by China's public security authorities in 2016 has helped to find 4,707 lost children in the last five years.
The platform named Tuanyuan (Reunion), was launched by the Ministry of Public Security of China on May 15, 2016. Since then, it has published 4,801 reports on missing children of which 4,707 were found later with a success rate of 98. 4 percent, the People's Daily announced on its official account on China's Twitter-like platform Weibo.
The system is not only a success against human trafficking but also a good example of cooperation between the police and the community, the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security posted on its official WeChat account on Sunday.
Once a child is reported as lost, the platform shares the information of the missing child, through new media and mobile application terminals, around the place the child went missing allowing all surrounding phone users to accurately obtain relevant information and provide timely clues to assist the public security organs in solving the case as soon as possible.
Currently, 25 mobile applications have been connected to the platform, including Alipay, Didi, Tencent QQ, Eleme, etc.
According to the Outline for the Development of Children 2011-2020, a statistical report issued by the National Bureau of Statistics, the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese children are further protected.
China continues to increase its efforts to combat trafficking of children and the number of cases has decreased significantly. At the moment there are less than 20 cases of child abduction in China each year with almost all of them already solved.
The police remind that of the 4,707 reports of lost children, 63 percent were of children who ran away from home and only about one percent are victims of human trafficking by criminal organizations.
