{"id":17263,"date":"2018-10-03T23:23:54","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T23:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17263"},"modified":"2018-10-03T23:23:54","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T23:23:54","slug":"the-facebook-page-helping-to-find-egypts-lost-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17263","title":{"rendered":"The Facebook\u00a0page\u00a0helping to find\u00a0Egypt\u2019s lost children"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nCAIRO: A Facebook page has helped reunite hundreds of Egyptian families with their missing children as concern increases about child welfare.<\/p>\n

\nRamy El-Gebaly founded the Missing Children page three years ago when he realised there was no official body to coordinate efforts to find missing children.<\/p>\n

\nNow he uses the page to help coordinate more than 8,000 volunteers across\u00a0Egypt\u00a0and the Middle East in searching for loved ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe page\u2019s first achievement was the recovery of a\u00a0mentally ill child,\u201d El-Gebaly told Arab News. \u201cI cried from happiness but I also was disturbed when I learned in several occasions that kids may run away from their parents because they were abused or badly treated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nSocial media had become an increasingly common tool for parents to post images of their missing children in a country with a population of almost 100 million and wracked with poverty.<\/p>\n

\nEl-Gebaly said he started the page after seeing so many images and messages from people saying their child had gone missing.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cI realized that there are no mechanism to support those cases,\u201d El-Gebaly said. \u201cThe\u00a0page\u00a0now has more than 1 million followers and it has\u00a0helped 950\u00a0children and mentally\u00a0challenged people\u00a0to return to their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nThe page is full of heartbreaking posts and photos of mostly children with desperate appeals from their families.<\/p>\n

\nOne shows a picture of a boy in a blue shirt named Tamer Abdul Nasser Tawfiq. The post said he disappeared in 2014 when he was playing outside his grandfather\u2019s house aged 5 in the city of Dairut. The post urges people to call the provided numbers if they have information.<\/p>\n

\nAnother post describes an abduction.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThis car stopped in front of a child, kidnapped the kid, and flew away. Help us find him – his\u00a0mum\u00a0is devastated.\u201d The post included a CCTV image of a 4×4 car.<\/p>\n

\nOther posts show children who have been found and request users to get in touch if they know who they are.<\/p>\n

\nThe work of Missing Children was recognized by Facebook itself in its Community Leadership\u00a0Program that\u00a0includes 100 groups and activists representing 46 countries.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cTo\u00a0date, they have successfully helped more than 950\u00a0people\u00a0make their way back to their families\u2014among which are children and special needs adults,\u201d\u00a0the program said.<\/p>\n

\nOther pages and accounts on Facebook and other social media sites have also been set up to help find missing children.<\/p>\n

\nCases of child abduction rose\u00a0in Egypt after the 2011 uprising. The ensuing political instability led to a drop in security in the years that followed, increasing crime and making it less likely for police and other services to be able to help track down those who went missing\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nThere are no accurate figures for the number of missing children in\u00a0Egypt.<\/p>\n

\nThe\u00a0Egyptian\u00a0Center for Political and Legal Studies said 860\u00a0children were reported missing children in 2013, jumping to\u00a01,700\u00a0in 2014. The figure for 2015 was\u00a0\u00a0412 and Egyptian\u00a0authorities did not publish any official statistics since that year.<\/p>\n

\nAccording to the\u00a0International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, 8 million are reported missing worldwide each year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nThe center says children go missing for several reasons, including runaways, parental abductions, unaccompanied migrant minors and criminal abductions.<\/p>\n

\nChild welfare has become an increasingly discussed issue in Egypt this summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nIn August, two brothers, aged three and five, were killed and dumped in a river in Dakahlia governorate. Their father later confessed to the crime, which shocked the nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CAIRO: A Facebook page has helped reunite hundreds of Egyptian families with their missing children as concern increases about child welfare. Ramy El-Gebaly founded the Missing Children page three years ago when he realised there was no official body to coordinate efforts to find missing children. Now he uses the page to help coordinate more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":17264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}