Definitions of Terms Related to Missing Persons
A clear understanding of key terms such as “missing person,” “abduction,” “runaway,” and “human trafficking” is essential for effective communication and investigation.
Different categories and classifications of missing persons cases, such as endangered, critical, and long-term, help prioritize investigative efforts and allocate resources effectively. Accurate use of terminology is crucial in reports, communications, and media interactions. This section highlights the importance of consistent terminology and its impact on public perception and investigative outcomes. For this matter it is crucial to have a guide on the role of terminology in investigations, which can be based on several police forces or NGO guidelines.
To understand and apprehend some useful terms see the following chart and use it as your glossary to deal with a missing person case.
- Catastrophic Missing – Child or adult who is reported missing and assumed to be a victim of some type of disaster (fire, flood, earthquake, terrorist act, etc.).
- Dependent Adult – Adult who is reported missing and who has physical or mental limitations, e.g., dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, autism (which restrict their abilities to carry out normal activities).
- Lost – Child or adult who is reported to have strayed away and whose whereabouts is unknown.
- Parent/Family Abduction – Child who is taken, detained, concealed, enticed away, or retained by a parent/family member or person at the request of the parent.
- Runaway – A child under 18 years of age who is reported missing but has left of their own free will.
- Stranger Abduction Child or adult who is taken or abducted against their will by an unknown person or a known person who is not a family member.
- Suspicious Circumstances Child or adult who is reported missing, and the circumstances give rise to believe that: foul play may be involved, the person is a danger to self or others (due to mental, physical, or emotional condition), or the disappearance is out of character for the individual and no known reasons can be determined.
- Unknown – Child or adult who is reported missing, but there are insufficient facts to determine the circumstances.
- Voluntary Missing Adult – Adult who is reported missing, but who has left of their own free will.
- AMBER Alert – Broadcast Emergency Response Alert, which is a nationally recognized program used by law enforcement to help find children under the most serious life-threatening conditions. This is a rapid notification to the public, which utilizes all available technology during the most critical period after a child/missing person has been abducted. The AMBER Alert is limited to
- specific criteria in each country.
- Dental / Skeletal X-rays / and Medical Records- All X-rays, dental charts, treatment notes, records, models, and photographs which are in the possession of a dentist, physician, surgeon, or medical facility.
- DNA Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) – is used to identify an individual’s patterned chemical structure of genetic information by analyzing a biological specimen such as blood, tissue, or hair. It is commonly used to prove/disprove an individual’s commission of a crime. It is often used to determine the paternity of a child.
- Endangered Missing Advisory (EMA) – An EMA can be issued in cases where the statutory criteria for an AMBER Alert are not met; however, an agency has reasons to believe the person is at risk or endangered and assistance in distributing information to help locate the individual(s) is desired.
- Evidence a Missing Person is “At Risk”- “At Risk” includes, but is not limited to, the person missing being the victim of a crime or foul play, in need of medical attention, has no pattern of running away or disappearing, the victim of parent/family abduction, or mentally impaired, including cognitively impaired or developmentally disabled.
- Missing Person – Any person who is reported missing to a law enforcement agency until the person is located or determined to be a voluntarily missing adult. It also includes any child who is missing voluntarily or involuntarily, or under circumstances not conforming to his/her ordinary habits or behavior and who may need assistance.
- Reporting Myth – It is an incorrect assumption that 24 hours or any other time frame must pass before a law enforcement agency will accept a missing person report.
Legal Framework and Obligations
In the Portuguese legal system, disappearance does not constitute the commission of a crime, so the investigation carried out by the OPC, without the direct intervention of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, can be framed within a framework of legal legitimacy of attributing the Police under the responsibility of crime prevention functions. provided for in the law, as the Police have powers to carry out investigations within the scope of those functions, even before the opening of an Inquiry, basing the legitimacy of the missing persons investigation carried out by the OPC on this basis.
The Criminal Investigation Organization Law (LOIC) does not assign any specific OPC to investigate missing persons, and the P.S.P. and the G.N.R. carry out such investigations.
However, this type of investigation should be the exclusive responsibility of the Judiciary Police, since the crimes that may underlie a disappearance, according to the LOIC, are all within its reserved competence, namely the crime of homicide, to the crime of kidnapping or kidnapping.
On the other hand, the new organizational structure of the Judiciary Police also has the responsibility, in addition to carrying out the investigation, of crime prevention activities, even having an “autonomous” crime prevention department with the specific function of investigating missing people.
Effectively, Decree Law 137/2019 of September 13th (amended by Law 35/2023, of July 21st) which establishes the powers of the P.J. Units provided in its Article 36, no. 1, paragraph h), that the Criminal Information Unit (UIC) has as one of its powers to carry out criminal prevention actions and detection of missing persons.
And since “disappearance” is not a crime, it is obviously not subject to the statute of limitations for criminal proceedings, meaning that, until it is definitively resolved, any disappearance investigation can be carried out, regardless of the time that has elapsed since the event, being correct. the statement that “a disappearance is never archived”.
An overview of international conventions and treaties related to missing persons, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, provides a foundation for understanding the global context of missing persons cases.
The national laws and regulations governing missing persons cases across various European countries, highlighting differences and similarities. Understanding these laws is crucial for ensuring compliance and effective case management.
International Provisions relevant to missing persons are to be found in a number of universal or regional international treaties, for instance:
International humanitarian law – Geneva Convention (I) for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field (1949); – Geneva Convention (II) for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea (1949); – Geneva Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1949); – Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1949); – Protocol additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts [Protocol I] (1977); – Protocol additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts [Protocol II] (1977);
International human rights law – International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966); – Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989); – International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (2006); – Regional conventions on protection of human rights: the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950), the American Convention on Human Rights (1969), and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981).
Other relevant international (universal and regional) instruments:
– The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998); – United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979); – United Nations Declaration on the Protection of All Persons From Enforced Disappearance (1992); – United Nations Guidelines for the Regulation of Computerized Personal Data Files (1990); – Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (1981); – OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data (1980). There are also a number of principles of international customary law that concern the protection and rights of missing persons and their families. These principles subtend or supplement the provisions encoded in international treaties. They are listed in the ICRC study on Customary International Humanitarian Law published in 2005.
A few salient points of international law relating to missing persons International humanitarian law and international human rights law give considerable space to preventing disappearances. For example, they promote a number of measures such as issuance of identity cards and appropriate recording of essential identity-related data. In order to prevent people from disappearing without trace, it is vital that the national legal framework specifically protect a number of fundamental rights such as the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of life; the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of liberty; the right to respect for one’s family life; the right not to be subjected to torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; the right not to be subjected to enforced disappearance; and the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (2006) is the first universal treaty to define and prohibit enforced disappearance, which is defined as being “the abduction or detention of a person by agents of the State followed by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law”. As of 13 August 2009, 81 States had signed the Convention and 13 had ratified it. It will enter into force when it has been ratified by 20 States. To combat enforced disappearance, the Convention combines four approaches:
Fighting impunity – The Convention places States under the obligation to bring the perpetrators of enforced disappearances to justice. This applies not only to persons who have committed such crimes on their own territories, but also to cases where the alleged crime was committed under another State’s jurisdiction. In such cases, States have an obligation to prosecute or extradite the suspect in order ensure that no one evades justice.
Prevention – The Convention provides for a number of procedures as safeguards against disappearances. Every person deprived of his freedom must be registered and detained in an official place and all his movements must be recorded. More importantly still, every person deprived of his freedom must be allowed to have contacts with the outside world and, in particular, to communicate with his family and his lawyer. The family and the lawyer also have the right to be informed of the person’s detention and of his whereabouts.
Victims’ rights – This Convention is the first instrument to explicitly recognize that the people who disappear are not the only victims of enforced disappearance. It gives families the right to know the fate of their members and acknowledges that victims of enforced disappearance have a right to compensation for the wrong they have suffered.
Implementation – An international committee of 10 independent experts has been set up to supervise the application of the Convention. The experts receive reports from States but they can also receive complaints from individuals.
The Convention also provides for a habeas corpus procedure whereby relatives or other concerned persons who fear that a person has been subjected to enforced disappearance can lodge a complaint directly with this international committee. If their complaint turns out to be justified, the committee asks the State in question to trace the missing person and determine his whereabouts.
Every national law on missing persons must have some fundamental elements:
- a clear definition of the concept of missing persons and recognition of a legal status applicable to persons unaccounted for and their families;
- recognition of a family’s rights to knowledge, and thus information, about the fate of their missing next of kin;
- criminalization under national law of violations against the norms of international humanitarian law and human rights law applicable to disappearances, and enforced disappearances in particular; • establishment of investigative and prosecutorial mechanisms to enforce said penal legislation; • recognition of the rights of missing persons’ families while their relatives are unaccounted for, giving particular attention to the vulnerable;
- establishment of measures to ensure that all individuals, particularly minors and other vulnerable persons, are provided with means of personal identification;
- establishment of measures guaranteeing that members of the armed forces and security forces are provided with means of personal identification at the very least, an identity tag), requiring the use of those means of identification, and ensuring that they are used properly;
- provisions ensuring the exchange of family news under all circumstances;
- in the particular case of persons deprived of liberty, the establishment of measures to ensure that families, a lawyer, or any other person with a legitimate interest in their situation be informed thereof, as well as to ensure that they can communicate with them;
- the right to be booked and detained in an official facility;
- the protection of persons against the risks of disappearance, particularly in the case of persons deprived of liberty, by authorizing regular, independent inspection visits, unannounced and without restriction, by the International Committee of the Red Cross or any other independent national or international organization;
- the designation of a national authority as competent in this area;
- establishment of a National Information Bureau with responsibility for gathering and transmitting information about injured, sick and shipwrecked persons as well as persons deprived of liberty and deceased persons; and
- appropriate arrangements for the management of human remains.
