25 May, World Day of Missing Children
Established by the UN in 1983, the "World Day of Missing Children" records dramatically increasing figures. In Italy alone, in 2020, 21 children disappeared a day. The intervention of Francesco Provinciali
Established by the UN in 1983, the "World Day of Missing Children" records dramatically increasing figures. In Italy (source Telefono Azzurro) in 2018 one child disappeared every 48 hours: they became 21 a day, almost one every hour, in 2020, according to the report by Government Commissioner Silvana Riccio.
Two years ago 7,672 minors disappeared in our country (9,656 in 2021), of which 5,511 foreigners, equal to 71.8% (6,960 in 2021). Those found were 3,332, 43.3%, of which 75% Italian.
But these numbers are added to the "historical" disappearances: as of December 31, 2020 (from January 1, 1974), there are 136,884 reports of the disappearance of minors, of which 43,655 of Italian nationality and 93,229 of foreign nationality. Of these, about 50% were never found. The most worrying data concern the cd. "Unaccompanied foreign minors", which have now become a true social phenomenon.
As for age, the most numerous range goes from 14 to 17 years and is often linked to voluntary removals, school failures, family dissolution, while the disappearance of children is worrying, especially if associated with migratory phenomena that conceal illicit trafficking, from 'purchase of the minor on commission for sexual exploitation, up to organ transplantation.
These are extremely varied situations, mostly managed by crime, which conceal chilling realities. Some are made known as news stories (family vendettas, trade and trafficking of minors, kidnappings) others remain hidden by the gray limbo of an often impenetrable reality. There are cases of disappearance linked to the world of the web, to situations of online solicitation or extortion and sexual exploitation, taking into account the increasingly long time that children and children spend in front of the screens of PCs, tablets and smartphones.
In the contemporary anthropological context, however, new technologies appear more and more often in the background of these events of disappearances affecting minors.
The disappearance of a minor is always a dramatic fact: there are countries where their overexposure to organized crime is devastating, geographical areas where 'trafficking' takes on the appearance of an inevitable succession: in Afghanistan, for example, there is the phenomenon of girls of 8/9 years sold for sexual purposes and 11/12 years for arranged marriages. A source of survival for families in extreme poverty.
The war in Ukraine has confronted us with the dramatic reality of minors who have disappeared into thin air (in addition to those killed in the conflict): how many are there? Where have they gone? What will their future be ?. The Orthodox Church of Kiev has provided tragic data, up to 200 thousand minors exported from the country with an unknown destination. There is no evidence: in a situation of continuous belligerence, neither the local authorities, nor the press, nor the non-profit organizations that deal with assistance are able to provide reliable data.
But even if the numbers were more contained, it would be a true generational falcidie.
This war does not make us forget other places on the planet where minors are deprived of any protection, victims of the most vile trade, predestined to succumb to a short and dramatic life.
Certainly what is happening in Ukraine is emblematic, considering that, according to Save The Children, 63,000 children were born in two months of war. How many will remain in the country, how many will disappear elsewhere? The most significant drama remains everywhere the constant growth of missing minors: once the “dedicated day” is archived, the phenomenon will continue to increase exponentially without – in practice – it being stopped or contained.
Because the real scandal is the unstoppable human cruelty: an outrage perpetrated to the detriment of unborn life which it seems impossible to remedy.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/25-maggio-giornata-mondiale-dei-minori-scomparsi/ on Wed, 25 May 2022 06:14:14 +0000.