Even in countries who are signatories to the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, parental abduction can be difficult to remedy. Consider this post from International Family Law:
South Africa’s Court of Appeal has blasted the failure of the courts below to order the prompt return of a child, now aged five, who was wrongfully retained in South Africa away from his then habitual residence in the Netherlands by his mother for 3½ years. The Court ordered (June 4, 2007) that the child now be returned immediately to the Netherlands, in compliance with South Africa’s obligations under the Hague Child Abduction Convention.
Meanwhile, Florida Divorce Law Blog reports of a Canadian child abducted by a parent from Canada to Lebanon via Australia and the mother's plea for change in Hague countries:The mother eventually got her kids back, via unorthodox means that landed two men aiding her in jail temporarily. But both Canada and Lebanon now reportedly recognize that the mother has full legal custody of the kids.
Somehow, the mother was able to expend hundreds of thousands of dollars to recover her children from where they were allegedly abducted to in Lebanon. And the father now faces criminal charges in Canada.
But not all children have such a positive outcome when abducted from Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction - signatory countries to non-signatory countries.
The mother is now serving as a spokesperson for the Missing Children Society of Canada.
And her hard-learned message is:
stricter controls are needed in countries which are signatories to the Hague Convention, to prevent noncustodial parents from circumventing the Hague Convention by whisking children off to countries that are not signatories to the Hague Convention …
Because recovering children from countries that do not adhere to the Hague Convention is just plain dicey - at best.
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