(ANS – Yercaud) – The Salesian Provincial Conference of South Asia (SPCSA) held its General Assembly meeting on 27 and 28 May at The Retreat, Yercaud. During the meeting the Youth At Risk commission of the SPCSA launched a book entitled “Missing children: Who Cares?”, written and compiled by Fr. Joe Prabhu, SDB, Joint Secretary, YaR Forum, South Asia.

Fr. Maria Arokiam Kanaga,  Regional Councillor for South Asia and President of SPCSA, launched the book by presenting the first copy to Fr. Balaraju Raminedi, the Provincial in-charge of the SPCSA for the YaR regional commission.

Fr. Maria Arokiam presented the second and third copies to Fr. Koshy George, the newly appointed Secretary of YaR, and to Fr. Mathew Thomas, the outgoing YaR Secretary, in the presence of forty Salesians from all the Provinces of the South Asia region, including all the Provincials.

“The whole issue of child protection, particularly of missing children, is a matter of growing concern among child rights activists and policy makers”, said Fr. Prabhu prior to the book launch. He bewailed the lack of coordination among the different stakeholders of child care, and lack of knowledge of procedures and the insensitive handling of cases of missing children in general. He expressed the motive behind the publication of the book saying that “The vision of a safe and secure environment for all children as envisaged in the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000, is still a distant reality. But we can, and we must, push for more concerted action to control and eliminate the growing menace, and we cannot allow this to be swept under the carpet.”

“Missing Children: Who cares?” brings together recent statistics, relevant laws, guidelines, court-rulings, initiatives and interventions of many stakeholders in their task of working to find missing children who cannot be traced.

The book has informative chapters dealing with the phenomenon of Missing Children; International and national protocols on Missing children; Interventions on Missing Children from the Government of India, the State Governments and NGOs; and ways and means of tackling the problem of missing children, including efforts by YaR through Child Safety Net and Home Link systems.

The book is dedicated to the victim children of the country in the hope that it will provide a breakthrough for child safety net in the lives of Indian children. Copies are available from Don Bosco National Forum for the Young at Risk.

Published 09/06/2014