The missing person is the person who is absent from his/her habitual place of residence for which his/her whereabouts are unknown. Disappearances with a social phenomenon, but not political, that may or may not be related to cases of human trafficking. This is because any missing person can be a potential victim of exploitation.

The National Registry of Information on Missing Persons, created by Law No. 28022, is a capital tool for the fight against this phenomenon.

The objective of this Registry is: “to centralize and organize the information of the whole country in a database that contains unified information about those missing persons and those that were located”.

It is the only tool available in Peru to centralize information related to missing persons.

The State must not neglect the search for any missing person. Through the location of these people, networks of human traffickers can be discovered and dismantled.

Capital Humano y Social Alternativo was in charge of coordinating the Peruanos Desaparecidos portal for a brief period in 2007, and the administration of the portal was then handed over to the Ministry of Interior. Unfortunately, in 2017, the system fell due to technical problems.

Currently the Ministry of Interior (Mininter) manages a page called TeEstamosBuscando that part of the implementation of Law No. 29685 and its regulations, this page allows the dissemination of complaints of missing minors based on the alerts issued by the Division of Investigation and Search of Missing Persons of the National Police of Peru (PNP).

Peru is the fourth country in Latin America with the highest rate of missing persons.  According to the National Police, from 2011 to 2017 there were about ten daily reports of disappearances throughout the country.

Number of missing persons between 2014 – 2016 according to the National Registry of Information on Missing Persons:

According to statistics, the majority of cases of missing persons are among women (59 per cent) between the ages of 15 and 20 (32 per cent).  Of this total, 68 per cent of minors are victims of labour exploitation, 22.7 per cent are sexually exploited and 8.91 per cent are victims of other types of exploitation, including organ trafficking.

Between January and July 2018, more than 100 children and adolescents disappeared, many of whom fall into labor and sexual exploitation and even organ trafficking.

In relation to the number of missing persons in the world, the figures are very variable and inaccurate considering that disappearances are a very difficult phenomenon to measure. In addition, the way to quantify the data varies from country to country, therefore, giving a unique number of missing persons in the world would be complicated. However, there are figures that help us dimension this problem.

According to Missing Children Europe, a European federation for missing and sexually exploited children, in that region a child is reported missing every 2 minutes. Given this situation, there is the single line 116 00 that is used in 32 countries of the European Community to report missing children. In 2017 alone, 189,024 calls were received.

In Spain, as of 2017, there were 4,164 active reports for missing persons registered in the database of Missing Persons and Unidentified Human Remains (PD and RH) of the Secretary of State for Security (SES).

On the other hand, in the United Kingdom every 90 seconds a missing person is reported according to Missing People, that is, 180,000 people are reported missing each year.

In the case of Latin America, the Ministry of Ecuador reported that until December 2017, there were 1,577 cases of investigation for disappearances. As in the European continent, some countries in the Americas have begun to implement the “Amber Alert” in order to facilitate the search for missing children. This alert allows joint actions to be deployed, among various institutions, aimed at the search for the child or adolescent.

Initiatives like this are significant and necessary if one takes into account that many times disappearances are a prelude to committing a crime, for example that of human trafficking

On July 10, 2003, President Alejandro Toledo promulgated Law No. 28022, which creates the National Registry of Information on Missing Persons. This law orders the State to publish an updated and unified database of persons reported missing, as well as those who have been located or who are in centers of attention, shelter, detention or internment.

The regulation of Law 28022 was issued by the government on December 17, 2003. This designates the Ministry of the Interior and the Division of Missing Persons of the National Police of Peru as responsible for the administration of the platform. Six months before the publication of Law 28022, on January 7, 2003, the Ministry of the Interior had signed an inter-institutional cooperation agreement with the Fundación Peruanos Desaparecidos.

The agreement provided for a “union of efforts” between both parties for the search and recognition of persons reported missing before the National Police. Thus, the private association would lend its Internet platform for the exhibition – with photographs and basic information – of reported cases. As can be read in the agreement to whichRPPData had access, the Directorate of Criminal Investigation and its Division of Missing Persons was in charge of sending these data to update the page. This provisional version, which operated under the link peruanosdesaparecidos.org, ceased to operate on December 29, 2017.

In June 2016, Law No. 30470.- Law No. 30470 was enacted to search for persons disappeared during the period of violence 1980 – 2000.

Since May 2011, Law 29685, known as the ‘Brunito Law’, has been in force, which established special measures in cases of disappearance of minors, elderly adults and persons with disabilities. This norm was only regulated seven years later, on July 24, 2018, with Supreme Decree No. 006-2018-IN which highlights the creation of a special system for the search of children and adolescents reported missing.

1. “You have to wait 24 hours to report”

False. It is not necessary to wait 24 or 48 hours. The earlier the police report is made, the better chances you will have to find the missing person.

2. “It is necessary to be a relative in order to file a police report”

False. Any person close to the disappeared person can report the incident at the police station.

3. “It is better to go to the police station closest to the home of the missing person”

True. If the complaint is made at the police station closest to the home of the missing person, the police will be able to carry out the technical inspection faster.

The social causes of disappearances are multiple and can result from structural factors such as cyclical.

“In Peru, the main ingredient (..) is social abandonment, the absence of State, which pushes many young people and adolescents not to measure the risk of easy “jobs ”; or that leads a good number of parents from “remote” rural areas, and from the Amazon in particular, to deliver their children to relieve their burden, convinced, at the same time, that they offer them a better future, deceived for the “pickers” and traffickers. ” (Source: A. Querol, Ideele Magazine No. 192).

Regarding disappearances in minors, the following reasons stand out:

• Love relationships at an early age or not accepted.
• Family abuse: Loss of affection, trust and communication
• Economic difficulties, which generate an inadequate family relationship, due to the abandonment of children for long periods of time.
• Disobedience of parents or guardians, absence separation, and assaults.
• Problems in school or poor academic performance, at the time report cards are delivered at the end of the student grade period.
• Because they are lost, especially children under 10 years old.
• Relationship with people unknown or contacted through the internet, whose purposes are not always reliable.
• Possible grooming for exploitation purposes.