Missing children

Every year in the Netherlands alone about 16,000 people missing. Most are within a short time back home. A small group remain missing. They are the victim of an accident or crime. Sometimes it remains unclear what happened to the missing.

In the Netherlands missing children are traced by the police, in cooperation with specialists from the National Bureau for Missing Persons (LBVP) in Zoetermeer.

LBVP manages the Missing Persons System (VPS). This is used for the registration of missing persons and their descriptions.

The LBVP cooperates with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).

This American organization has great expertise in tracing children. They use so calles aging-photos. They show how a child now, after a x-number of years missing, could look like. Thanks to those photos more than 453 missing children were found. Of 17 unidentified human remains the identity could still be traced.

Both LBVP as the National Police Force are connected to the computer network of the NCMEC.

On the website of LBVP (www.vermistekinderen.nl) are photos of all the children who are missing in the Netherlands.