No matter the events that led a child to be categorized as missing, the first and foremost step in law enforcement agencies’ recovery and return efforts is positive identification. Traditional methods involve manual check of photographs, ID documents, interviews and such like. These are often time-consuming, not accurate, subject to human error and can be misleading (e.g. name change, change of a child’s face due to aging). It is crucial that the means of identification does and cannot change over time and cannot be changed.

Moreover, the absence of a centralized global database of missing children that is shared and fed by law enforcement agencies hampers recovery efforts in the case of international kidnappings, or even interstate occurrences.

For efficiency purposes, such database should hold identification data, as well as information on parents, home address, phone number, notes on a critical medical condition of the child (if any), etc. Considering the fragile state of the child, as well as the parents, the identification process should be completed in a speedy manner.

Protect The Children (PTC) is a service to be offered to the public by GRI whereby parents enroll their children’s irises with a secure database, by taking their images with an HCAM^®. PTC creates a reference database of children’s iris images and gives access to law enforcement agencies, facilitating fast identification and recovery of missing children.