Roughly 500 people are reported missing in Slovenia each year, about 30% of them are minors. Finding them will now be made easier with the help an alert system launched by the US tech giant Meta in cooperation with the Slovenian police. Slovenia is only the 30th country in the world to use the AMBER Alert tool.

AMBER Alert sends an alert through Facebook and Instagram to people in areas where a missing child was last seen. Meta, which owns the two social media, says it is aware that every minute counts and will strive to send out the alerts as soon as possible.

Head of the Homicide and Sexual Offences Section of the Slovenian Police Damjan Miklič says that Slovenia is a very safe country but the police are always on the lookout for new tools to make their work more effective.

"One such tool is the alert system for missing children. It will help us notify the public and call everyone to help in the search," Miklič was quoted as saying in a press release on 11 January.

The alerts will contain information on the child and a photo. Users will be able to view the alerts multiple times and will be encouraged to share it with friends. The alerts will be distributed to those who can be of the most help, Meta said in a press release.

Police statistics show between 400 and 600 people a year have been reported missing in the country in the past decade. Most of these are adults and older people, often people with dementia or other disease associated with old age. The percentage of underage missing persons has been constant at about 30%.

Slovenia hosted an international conference on missing persons in October in cooperation with AMBER Alert Europe, which heard that 300,000 children are reported missing in Europe every year.