A new campaign has been launched to draw attention to child disappearances in Costa Rica, reported the state Electrical and Telecommunications Institute (ICE) yesterday.

In January and February of this year, the Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ) Alert Unit received 146 reports of missing minors throughout the country.

Fortunately, in all but one of these cases, the minors were located. The exception being one case in which the children reportedly left the country with one of their parents.

ICE has collaborated in aiding with the search of the cases that required mass alerts, and said during the past month they have activated eight such alerts through their Kölbi celular platform.

The effort is to further compliance with the law (9307) which mandates an alert system for responding to the disappearance or abduction of minors, said ICE.

The campaign is designed to strengthen the alliance between the National Commission for Alert Systems (CONASA), the ICE Group, and the National Children’s Welfare Agency (PANI). Its slogan is, “El peligro que corren los niños y las niñas no es un cuento,” which translates roughly as, “The dangers faced by children are no joke.”

The law empowers CONASA to request the collaboration of state institutions, private companies, civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations to comply with efforts to address child disappearances, said PANI executive president, Dr. Ana Teresa León Sáenz.

“For the ICE Group this is a banner issue of social responsibility, which reaffirms our historic commitment to accompany Costa Rican society in its integral development, by providing services to address social issues, such as our participation … in the rapid and efficient dissemination of alerts on disappearances and abductions of minors,” said Carlos Manuel Obregón, president of the ICE Group.

In cases of a minor who is believed to have disappeared, the following steps are followed:

Any of the institutions that make up the country’s alert system can receive the complaint of the disappearance, and will communicate the information to all the institutions through the 9-1-1 system with the code “Minor disappeared-abducted.”

Then the OIJ assesses whether or not a mass alert should be activated, and they send an alert to the immigration authorities alerting that the minor should not be allowed to leave the country.

If the missing person is determined to be at risk, a missing person alert is immediately activated: the OIJ sends a text message to be broadcast by telephone companies.

When the minor is located, the OIJ retracts the alert and sends a message to the members of CONASA through the 9-1-1 system.

The National Coordinating Commission for the Alert System (CONASA) is made up of the PANI, the OIJ, the Ministry of Public Security, the General Directorate of Migration and Immigration, the Costa Rican Red Cross, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the emergency 9-1-1 service.

For inquiries on the topic, there is a free toll line, 1147, and reports or complaints can be made at 9-1-1.