International Missing Children’s Day: Up to Ten Thousand Czech Children Go Missing Every Year
A Every
year the Czech police receive several thousand reports of missing children. In
2004, the figure came close to ten
thousand – that’s in a country with a population of only ten million.
Humanitarian organisations hope to bring awareness
to the large number of children missing around the world and join forces to
find more effective ways to reduce that number.
B The
Czech “Our Child” Foundation, a member of the European Federation for Missing
and Sexually Exploited Children, recently completed its study and came up with
shocking results. Zuzana Baudyšová is the director of “Our Child”: “The outcome
of the study is a little bit pessimistic. At the moment, there are 350 children
who have run away from institutional care and who the police are searching for.
Sixty-five more have run away from their homes. So that’s another category of
children who are at risk. Both figures are very high.”
C With
time the great majority of the missing children in the Czech Republic do turn up, and statistics include only
those cases reported to the police. The number of children who are abducted is
unknown but it is believed to make up only a fraction of the total number of
those who go missing, most of whom are runaways. But while the figures for
those who run away from institutional care have increased by eighty-five
percent in the last two years, the numbers of children who left home or are
believed to have been abducted have dropped by some thirty percent.
D
Although most missing children are found, Mrs Baudyšová points to the fact that
in the short time they spend out on the streets, they are at a very high risk
of being abused: “We are afraid that we have been recording a phenomenon of
commercial sexual exploitation –
child pornography, the trade in children, and sexual exploitation. This
category of children is very much influenced and prepared to be abused by this
new phenomenon. Most of them are street children without money or food and they
are prepared to accept any offer in order to survive even to be in a
pornographic video or be clients of paedophiles.”
E In the
Czech Republic, there is still much room to
battle the problem more effectively. The country still lacks a monitoring system that records and analyses every missing
child case – why a child has run away, what places children tend to run away
from, and where they seek refuge. With such information at hand, the country’s
organisations dealing with child care could join forces, guarantee children
better conditions and prevent them from taking to the streets and becoming
victims of abuse.
awareness – povědomí
exploitation – zneužívání, vykořisťování
figure – počet
to lack – postrádat
to turn up – objevit se
1) Read the article and match each of the headings to a paragraph.
1
The statistics of missing children
2
The study of “Our Child” Foundation
3
The Czech Republic needs a monitoring system
4
Large number of children missing around the world
5
Street children are risk of being abused
2) Read the article and answer the questions.
1
What is the article about?
2
Who does “Our Child” Foundation work with? How does it help?
3
Who is Zuzana Baudyšová? What does she say about missing children?
4
What are problems of street children?
3) Explain the following words.
1
institutional care
2
abducted
3
runaway
4
to abuse
5
paedophile
4) Answer the following questions.
Why
do children leave home? Why do children run away from institutional care? Who
and how can help children in need? What are dangers that street children
encounter?
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