The "Find Me" system has been activated six times so far, and in five cases missing children have been found, the main criticism of the slow distribution of SMS notifications
Twelve-year-old girl from Belgrade found is a few hours after the "Find Me" system was activated after her, and the Ministry of the Interior announced that the girl returned home unharmed on her own.
This disappearance once again raised questions about when this system is opened and how long it takes from the moment when there is knowledge that a child is missing until it is activated.
A girl from Belgrade was found for whom the "Find Me" system was open during the night.
The Find Me system was launched at the end of October 2023, and has been activated six times so far. In five cases, the children were successfully found, while in the case of the first activation of this system in March 2024, when missing two-year-old Danka Ilić in Banjsko Polje near Bor. The girl has not yet been found, and there have been stories in the public that have not been confirmed to this day.
The second time the system was activated due to the disappearance of an eleven-year-old boy in New Belgrade on December 17, 2024, the search ended after a few hours, when a fellow citizen recognized the boy thanks to a tip and reported seeing him near the Galerija Shopping Center.
"Find me" is activated for the third time on March 3, 2025, when a girl who was only 22 months old disappeared in Ubu and was found near the house.
The system was activated for the fourth time on April 25, 2026, when a six-year-old boy went missing in Nis, who left the yard of his house in Mokranjčeva Street by himself. It was found the same day, in good condition.
The fifth activation refers to the case when a fifteen-year-old girl disappeared in Novi Sad. She was found in Belgrade, and with her was a fifteen-year-old boy whose disappearance was reported the same day. It was reported missing on April 29, and the system was activated three days later.
Igor Jurić from the Center for Missing and Abused Children told RTS that when he received information yesterday afternoon that the girl was missing, he also received a large number of messages about what to expect and why the system is not being activated.
"The system has shown its effectiveness, even though the girl returned home by herself. We are always guided by the interest of the child, the police have an obligation to protect both the child's privacy and the child's life," said Jurić.
We are happy that the search is over, he says, but today that child is on all portals, starting the system too often can endanger the child's privacy.
He pointed out that the first three hours are crucial for finding the child and that every second counts.
"It is important to see what are the causes of the disappearance and to have serious conversations with the children, to see if the child has been manipulated. It is important that things like this do not happen again," says Jurić.
Citizens are notified of the disappearance via SMS, television programs are interrupted with breaking news with pictures and data, and notices are played on highways and bus stations.
Most criticism of this system refers to the slow distribution of SMS messages. There is still no system that can send SMS to all citizens, users of network operators at the same time, so the messages in some cases arrived even after the child was found.
There is no territorial priority, so that when a child goes missing, people in that city are notified first, and in the surrounding area, it still goes randomly, so it happens that someone from Novi Sad receives a notification about the disappearance of a child in Nis first.
The system was designed with the idea of quickly involving the public in the search in the first, crucial hours after the disappearance of a child.
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