In Africa, despite authorities’ efforts, the number of missing children is not dropping the least. In that context, Morocco wants to capitalize on the decentralization of new technologies and ever-growing social media adoption to introduce a large-scale abduction alert system. 

Morocco’s General Directorate of National Security (DGSN) officially launched "Tifli Moukhtafi" - translates to my child is missing- last Tuesday. 

The system is a mechanism to alert and call for the search of children who went missing in suspicious circumstances. It was set up by the DGSN in partnership with Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. According to Ouafae Zouidi, head of international judicial cooperation and human rights at the presidency of the Public Prosecutor's Office, it leverages available databases and alert systems and capitalizes on the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence and tech tools in general. 

In Africa, the issue of missing children is a tragic and often-neglected humanitarian problem, according to Patrick Youssef, regional director of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for Africa. In August 2022, on the sidelines of  International Day of the Disappeared, a report published by the ICRC warned that more than 25,000 minors are missing on the entire continent. This figure represents 40% of the 64,000 missing persons cases in Africa, according to the report. 

By launching "Tifli Moukhtafi", the Moroccan government wants to put an end to the phenomenon of child abduction in the kingdom. The system includes a feature similar to the U.S. "Amber Alert" which will allow the real-time publication of disappearance cases on Facebook, starting from the users within the geographical area where the disappearance was reported, before being gradually shared in neighboring areas.