KEERO ADHNAN AHMED

A nine-year-old boy with special needs was rescued in the capital’s Mirpur last Sunday after a local pharmacy employee recognised him from a missing child alert on Facebook, a Meta platform.

The rescue marks the first successful recovery under Meta’s partnership with MUN Alert, a local emergency broadcast system, demonstrating the effectiveness of targeted social media notifications in helping to locate missing children.

MUN Alert started as a pilot project under the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on January 13 this year.

Saidul Islam, the pharmacy employee who rescued the child, told The Daily Star, “I suddenly saw a notification at the top of my Messenger that said, ‘Find a missing child in your area’. I had never seen a notification like that before. I clicked it and saw a photo of a kid.”

About an hour later, he noticed the same child wandering near his shop. He approached the boy, called the police, and handed him over to Pallabi Police Station.

The boy, Abdullah Al Sadib, went missing on Sunday afternoon. After Pallabi police merely took note of his father’s complaint without filing a general diary (GD), the boy’s tutor, Tania Akter, contacted MUN alert.

“I heard about MUN Alert’s, system on TV news. When police didn’t file a GD or begin searching for the child, I texted them, and they responded immediately,” Tania said.

The emergency broadcast system quickly posted an alert on its Facebook page and shared the information with Meta. Within an hour, Meta sent location-based notifications across Facebook, Messenger and Instagram, which led to the child’s rescue.

MUN Alert joined Meta’s missing alert network on May 25, marking International Missing Children’s Day, making Bangladesh the first South Asian country to join the network of over 30 countries.

The system uses precise location data to notify users in active search areas without sending disruptive push notifications.

Emily Vacher, director of Trust and Safety at Meta, inaugurated the programme on May 25, describing MUN Alert as “the most inspiring youth-led child protection initiative to emerge from South Asia”.

BUREAUCRATIC HURDLES STALL INITIATIVE

While MUN Alert began successfully sending notifications through Meta apps on Sunday, the broader initiative has struggled since its January 13 launch due to bureaucratic red tape and unfulfilled pledges.

Sadat Rahman, the key initiator of MUN Alert, said a proposed CID “Missing Children Cell” never materialised. He also said the banking sector did not fulfil its commitment to display alerts on ATM and television screens.

At present, the initiative heavily relies on city corporation billboards and social media. The app receives three to four alerts daily and has handled more than 200 cases. However, only 29 children have been recovered so far -- all from Dhaka.

To address these problems, the home ministry issued a guideline on April 12 assigning responsibility for investigating missing children cases and conducting rescue efforts to the Police Headquarters (PHQ). The Community Police Unit was tasked with leading the efforts.

However, Sadat and police sources said efforts to improve coordination and streamline the service have made little progress despite several meetings between the MUN Alert team and PHQ officials.

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