Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction

Child abduction or child theft is the process of removal of a minor (before his adulthood) from the custody of his legal parents or guardians. It is mostly done by the parent who has no child custody and is not able to meet his or her child, but it not logical and legal and makes so many problems in both the child and the parents. That is why the prevention of child abduction was needed.

For this reason, in 1980, a convention named Hague convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction was conducted by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) to prevent child abduction. In this article, we will be discussing those child abduction laws of Hague convention. Hopefully, this article will help you a lot in your child abduction case.

Child abduction laws of the Hague Convention

Child abduction is an unauthorized removal of a minor child from the custody of another parent. More clearly, when one parent takes their children without taking any permission or consent of another parent who has the child custody. There was a convention held in the Netherland for preventing this child abduction.

There have some laws, rules and regulations given by the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction in 1980. Mainly this convention was made for the prompt return of the abducted child from the country of wrongfully retained.

Here we are giving you detailed information about these laws against the international child abduction. These are as follows:

Procedural Nature

The laws of the abduction will only be applicable if the habitual residence of the abducted child is in a country which signed the contract. And this law is of abduction will also be applicable only for the minor child, who is under sixteen years old.

Wrongful remove or retention

The removal or wrongful retention of the child will be wrongful or illegal when it meets some requirements. These requirements are as follows:

• The abduction has to break the law of the child custody right of the habitual residence of the abducted child.
• It has to be proved that at the time of the abduction, those rights were accurately exercised in that habitual residence country.

Special rules of evidence

A person or an institution or any other body who is claiming that the child is abducted by breaking the custody rights may apply to the central authority of child’s habitual residence for securing the return of the abducted child. If you want to apply for it, you must abide by some rules. The application must contain many things. These are as follows:

• You have to provide some information, including the identity of the applicant, the identity of the child, the identity of the accused person who has removed or retained the child
• You must provide the date of birth of the abducted child
• You have to provide them with all available documents of the three persons (applicant, the accused person, and the child)

You have to maintain these instructions to give an application to the central authority of the child’s habitual residence. After applying for securing the return of your abducted child, if the central authority receives your application and finds everything is okay and believable that the child is in another contracting country, then they send it as soon as possible to that another contracting country.

Then the central authority of the country where the child is now situating will take necessary steps.

It is notable that according to the article number six, every country who has signed the contract has to designate a central authority to maintain all the procedures according to these laws which are imposed by the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

Limited defenses to return

The convention gave a restriction on the defenses against the return of the illegally removed or retained children from the country where he has taken. To defend against for returning the children who have abducted by generally another parent who hasn’t the custody of that child, one has to prove many things.

Here we are giving you the thing you have to prove to defend against to return the abducted children. These are as follows:

• One has to prove that the return of the child is violating the basic human rights or fundamental freedom of the child who was abducted to defend against to return the abducted children.
• You have to prove that there is a huge chance of physical, mental harm or placing the child in a difficult, uncomfortable and intolerable situation to defend against to return the abducted children.
• You have to prove that the child is matured enough to be abducted by someone and the law is not applicable for that child to defend against to return the abducted children.
• You have to prove that the applicant doesn’t have the custody of that child at the time of the abduction to defend against to return the abducted children.
• One has to prove that the applicant had given the permission of abducting that child to defend against to return the abducted children.
• One has to prove that one year passed from the time of abducting that child until the date of the administrative process to defend against to return the abducted children.

Conclusion

A convention was conducted named Hague convention on the civil aspects of international child abduction on 25 October 1980.  The primary intension of that convention was to return an internationally abducted child by a parent from one member country to another for searching more sympathetic court in the country.

That convention provides some laws to prevent child abduction. For knowing those laws, this is the best place for you. Here in this article, we have discussed the child abduction laws of the Hague convention. Hopefully, this article will be very beneficial to you.