In 2022, 43 202 disappearances of minors have been reported in France to cops, according to the Ministry of the Interior : a child is reported missing every 12 minutes. On the occasion of the International Day of Missing Children, the 116 000 Missing Children, the official emergency number co-ordinated and managed by the foundation Law of Childhood, published his first report on the disappearances of minors in France.

Year-to-year, the number of reported disappearances of minors continues to surpass the 40 000. Among those, nearly 41 158 fugues, the scope of which is often minimized so that they represent a genuine area of danger to the child. Add to this figure 544 parental child abduction, 43% of which involve a move to a foreign country. Finally, 1 140 disappearances disturbing, have been reported. Recent cover a variety of situations, but are most often fugues long, during which the contact with the child eventually be broken.

For the first time, this emergency number is funded by the Directorate General of Social Cohesion publishes a report on the disappearances of minors in France on the occasion of the 25 may, International Day of the Disappeared Children. This document provides an overview of the situations of fugues, parental abduction and disappearances disturbing as well as the comments of the professionals of the 116 000. A report that aims to better understand these phenomena, the brakes faced by families in search of their children and to alert on major trends such as the rejuvenation of the runaways, or the increase in situations of prostitution.

In fact, among the major events of the surveys, the 116 000 Missing Children note that the number of runaways under 15 years of age has increased from 3.6% at the national level since 2018. A trend also observed among the files that require the input of the monitoring unit. Among these, one third of those for girls were also cases of sexual exploitation of actual or suspected. A phenomenon of a significant increase in the past several years, motivated in part by the launch of the national plan for the fight against the prostitution of minors in November 2021. In this framework, the foundation Right from Childhood, which coordinates and manages the emergency number 116 000, has been tasked to establish national network of civil society actors mobilized against the prostitution of minors : the network PARÉ (Control and Animate a Network ofactors mobilized against the prostitution of children).

This report is available online on the new website, which has the 116 000 Missing Children. It allows visitors to share on social networks the opinion research of minors, published by the emergency number. In order to ensure their rapid diffusion, it is also possible to register to be informed by email of any new publications and fact sheets council have been written by experts in the emergency number in order to prevent the disappearance or respond effectively when they do occur.

The 116 000 Missing Children also wishes to enter the date of may 25, to continue to raise awareness to the issue of the missing miners. To this end, a spot of awareness will be broadcast on national tv throughout the week. A charity event online hosted on the platform Twitch, the Stream Is for Kids, will also bring together a quarantine of streamers in order to collect donations for the 116 000. These will be allocated to the funding of a new publicity campaign to raise awareness of the emergency number. In fact, 31 897 calls were made to the 116 000 in 2022, a number that is less than the total number of alerts that prompt to continue to strengthen its reputation in order to enable all families who are dealing with a missing child to take it.

Press Contact

Julien Landureau
07 68 36 71 23
julien.landureau@droitdenfance.org