Bern Welcomes a Study Visit under ICAAS Project on the Child Abduction Alert System

The event was organized under the Project Italian Child Abduction Alert System (ICAAS) and included, among its participants, various experts from the Italian SIRENE Office (part of the Servizio per la Cooperazione Internazionale di Polizia del Ministero degli Interni) which is the project leader, as well as experts from the Comando Generale dei Carabinieri, Telefono Azzurro and Formez.
The national alert system in the case of child abduction was launched in Switzerland on January 1 2010 following the kidnapping in 2007, of a 4 year old female child named Ylenia who was found dead 47 days after her abduction. The event stirred up profound emotions throughout the country and contributed to elaborating the alert system which officially entered into force at the beginning of this year. The need to establish this new device emerged for the second time in 2009 on the occasion of the murder of a 16 year old young girl, Lucie. In this second case, the girl’s family and friends embarked on severe investigations on their own initiative by distributing leaflets and by publishing find notices on the Internet.
The Swiss device which has been realized on a model that already exists in the United States, Canada and France, allows for quickly diffusing an alert throughout the national territory. The abduction notice is launched by the police at canton level and is coordinated by the Federal Police Office (fedpol) at central level, which disseminates alert messages by means of the national media, federal railways, road services and the main Swiss airports.
The authorities of merit have evaluated the hypothesis of conveying the message with the involvement of mobile telephone operators. In the future, subscribers may receive an alert system via text messages. In Switzerland, the alarm is launched only when children are in danger of loosing their life and not in the case of mere abduction, while the system which is intended to be established in Italy should be activated in all cases of child abduction. 
Moreover, in Switzerland the alert is broadcasted by TV as well: A message appears at the bottom of the screen as a scrolling text. In specific cases, a photograph of the abducted child may be shown in between TV programs.
The Italian experts will take part in a second visit in France which is foreseen in mid February, in order to examine the particular aspects of the French system.