How Alerta Sofía works, the new search system for missing children

The national government presented the Alerta Sofía program aimed at improving the "national coordination of search and urgent localization" of missing minors whose lives are "high-risk", published in the Official Journal. Notices will be posted on social networks, in Internet search engines and in the media. Search warnings will even reach cell phones.

The program, which will immediately release images of missing children, will operate as part of the federal missing and missing persons search (SIFEBU), created in 2016, and aims to streamline and improve the search mechanism. "It is necessary to set up a rapid alert system in Argentina to constitute a mechanism for dissemination and dissemination correctly and urgently the corresponding information on the most serious cases of disappearance, "added official sources.

"This is a search system for missing children that instantly disseminates information to reach more people in less time and give more hope to the family", said Patricia Bullrich, Minister of Security.

According to the Ministry, the program seeks to "provide research units with conceptual and the technical tools needed to use this resource"For this, as stated in the Official Journal, the program" had the support of the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children – ICMEC -, with whom a cooperation agreement was signed in 2016, from this moment member of the global network of this international organization and 32 other countries ".

Alert Sofia is the local version of Amber Alert used in more than 40 countries and named after Amber Hagerman, a missing and murdered girl in Texas, United States, in 1996. In Argentina, the name of Sofía Herrera was chosen, the three-year-old girl disappeared to a camping in Rio Grande, Tierra del Fuego, in September 2008.

Alerta Sofía will try to "provide the national state with an adequate tool to provide a quick and effective response," says the text of the ministry's resolution.

To put this program into use an agreement was signed with Facebook to broadcast the alerts there. Whatever the case may be, in the official newsletter, it is clear that messages will also be sent on Twitter and Internet search engines. With time, other social networks could be added.