By Peter Ochieng
Labour and Social Protection Cabinet Secretary (CS) Florence Bore has shared figures of children reported missing since June, 2023.
Bore said over 7,000 children have gone missing across the country since that time, with only a fifth of them being traced.
She said authorities had only managed to reunite 1,383 children with their families, out of 7,058 who went missing.
The CS shared the figures on Friday, during the marking of this year’s International Mission Children’s Day, under the theme of empowering communities to safeguard children from going missing.
“Behind each statistic lies a story of heartbreak and loss, a child torn from the embrace of loved ones, their future uncertain and their dreams shattered,” said the CS.
She called for the strengthening of measures aimed at preventing children from going missing, urging several stakeholders to embrace information sharing, resource mobilisation, and building capacities in efforts to strengthen the responses and mechanisms for missing children.
The Labour Ministry, the CS added, has put measures in place for the protection of children. She said the Ministry has developed guidelines to manage missing and found children, in a bid to strengthen response.
“The guidelines underscore the importance of a coordinated and integrated response to incidences involving missing and found children in the country. Central of these guidelines is the recognition that protecting our children is not just a moral imperative but a collective responsibility.”
The lack of a common definition of “missing child,” and a common response to the issue, results in few reliable statistics on the scope of the problem around the world.
However, according to the Global Missing Children’s Network, United States leads in the number of children reported missing each year.
In the United States, an estimated 460,000 children are reported missing every year, while in the United Kingdom, an estimated 112,853 children are reported missing every year.
In Germany, an estimated 100,000 children are reported missing each year, while in In India, an estimated 96,000 children go missing each year.