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"Father, 20 years ago, said he's going to get some cigarettes. He hasn't been seen since."
Missing persons
A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as their location and condition are unknown. A person may go missing through a voluntary disappearance, or else due to an accident, crime, death in a location where they cannot be found (such as at sea), or many other reasons. In most parts of the world, a missing person will usually be found quickly. While criminal abductions are some of the most widely reported missing person cases, these account for only 2–5% of missing children in Europe.
By contrast, some missing person cases remain unresolved for many years. Laws related to these cases are often complex since, in many jurisdictions, relatives and third parties may not deal with a person's assets until their death is considered proven by law and a formal death certificate issued. The situation, uncertainties, and lack of closure or a funeral resulting when a person goes missing may be extremely painful with long-lasting effects on family and friends.
A number of organizations seek to connect, share best practices, and disseminate information and images of missing children to improve the effectiveness of missing children investigations, including the International Commission on Missing Persons, the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC), as well as national organizations, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in the US, Missing People in the UK, Child Focus in Belgium, and The Smile of the Child in Greece.
Reasons
People disappear for many reasons. Some individuals choose to disappear, for others disappearance is inadvertent (e.g. getting lost) or it is imposed on them (abduction/imprisonment). Reasons for disappearance may include:
- To escape domestic abuse.
- Leaving home to live in an unknown place under a new identity.
- Becoming the victim of kidnapping.
- Child abduction by a non-custodial parent or other relative.
- Seizure by the federal authorities (Military, law enforcement, government) and imprisoned / detained indefinitely / tortured fatally / non fatally for an unknown period of time in an undisclosed guarded location without due process of law (see forced disappearance).
- Suicide in a remote location or under an assumed name (generally to spare their families the suicide at home or to allow their deaths to be eventually declared in absentia).
- Victim of murder (body disguised, destroyed, or hidden).
- Mental illness or other ailments such as Alzheimer's disease can cause people to forget where or who they are.
- Death by natural causes (disease) or accident far from home without identification.
- Becoming lost accidentally in remote areas, including when participating in outdoor recreation or labour (hiking, mountaineering, hunting, etc.)
- Disappearance to take advantage of better employment or living conditions elsewhere.
- Sold into slavery, serfdom, sexual servitude, or other unfree labor.
- To avoid discovery of a crime or apprehension by law-enforcement authorities, (See also failure to appear.) and punishment after committing a such crime (murder, theft, rape, terrorism, fraud, etc.).
- Joining a cult or other religious organization that requires no contact to the outside world.
- To avoid war or persecution during a genocide.
- As a consequence of war - e.g. missing in action, impressment, collateral damage
- To escape famine or natural disaster.
- Death by floods, flash floods, debris flows, hurricanes, tsunamis and tornadoes.
- Death in the water, with no body recovered.
- Aviation accident where no wreckage is found or ship wreck where no wreckage is found
- Desertion during war or absent without leave (AWOL).
- To avoid conscription.
- Hostage.
- To avoid paying someone or something.
Categories of missing children
- Runaways: Minors who run away from home, from the institution where they have been placed, or from the people responsible for their care.
- Thrownaways: Minors who are abandoned by their parents or guardians.
- Parental abduction: Minors who are abducted by their parents or guardians for unknown reasons.
- Non-parental abduction: Minors who are abducted by non-parental means. (e.g. random kidnapping on streets by random people.)
- Missing unaccompanied migrant minors: Disappearances of migrant children, nationals of a country in which there is no free movement of persons, under the age of 18 who have been separated from both parents and are not being cared for by an adult, who by law is responsible for doing so.
- Lost, injured or otherwise missing children: Disappearances for no apparent reason of minors who got lost (e.g., young children at the seaside in summer) or hurt themselves and cannot be found immediately (e.g. accidents during sport activities, at youth camps, etc.), as well as children whose reason for disappearing has not yet been determined or found.