Brazil registered 232 disappearances per day in 2025. Around 30% of this total are composed by children and adolescents. In total, 84,760 people disappeared, an increase of 4.12% compared to the previous year.
The data compiled is from the Ministry of Justice and is based on information bulletins occurrence of police stations in the 26 states and the Federal District. São Paulo has the highest number of cases, with more than 20 thousand missing people, representing practically 50 daily occurrencesaround 3% more than in 2024.
Next, to complete the top5, the states of: Minas Gerais (9,139), Rio Grande do Sul (7,611), Paraná (6,455) and Rio de Janeiro (6,331) appear.
In 2025, the government recreated a general database, known as the National Registry of Missing Persons, to facilitate searches and cooperation with authorities. However, only 12 states joined the system.
The unified database could help all public or private services to consult when a missing person is suspected. Mainly in health and social assistance services.
“In Brazil we have records of properties, motor vehicles, among others, but we still do not effectively have a single national registry of missing persons. In recent years the number of homicides has decreased, but the number of missing persons has increased. This indicates that some homicides may have migrated to situations of murders with the concealment of a corpse”, says Ariel de Castro Alves, member of the National Commission for Children and Adolescents of the OAB and former national secretary for children’s rights.
When segmenting the data on the missing, 54,102 are men and 30,050 are women. March was the month with the most occurrences, 7,536. The disappearance rate for every 100,000 inhabitants is 40 people.
“Brazil still does not have public policies for searching, locating and investigating disappearances. Public authorities are silent in this area. Cases are neglected in police departments. Police rarely investigate cases of disappearances”, reports the former secretary to CNN Brasil.
