The Foreign Service Journal, April 2003

in their portfolios, maintain contact with foreign counterparts and posts, and prepare briefing papers and talking points for demarches and congressional testimony. Each overseas post has a designated Children’s Issues officer, who is encouraged to come to CI for consul- tations prior to leaving for post. CI case officers also conduct specialized training in child custody and abduction issues as part of advanced consular courses and workshops at the Foreign Service Institute. While consular officers at overseas posts are charged with protecting the welfare of American citizens abroad, they cannot assist a left-behind parent in breaking the laws of the country where they are assigned. Likewise, a consular officer cannot just take custody of a minor American citizen child and put him/her on the next flight home. But consular officers do a magnificent job of persuading caretakers to allow welfare visits withAmerican citizen chil- dren, and CI has noticed a definite trend toward more detailed reporting cables on these visits. They are often able to persuade a caretaker to allow photographs of the child, and may even negotiate permission for direct contact between the left-behind parent and the child. Such contact, while not a substi- tute for seeking the child’s return, allows the left-behind parent to maintain a relationship with their child, and is crit- ical for both parent and child. An Important Remedy As Billy’s story demonstrates, the Hague Abduction Convention is prob- ably the most important current reme- dy for resolving international parental child abduction cases. Formulated in 1980 at the Hague Conference on Private International Law, the treaty is a means by which a designated civil court in the country where the child is temporarily located determines the country where custodial issues will be adjudicated. Approximately 80 percent of abductions involve children with a claim to more than one nationality. In fact, some of our outgoing Hague cases do not involve any U.S. citizens — adults or children — at all, since the convention focuses on a child’s habitu- al residence, not nationality. Each Hague treaty partner has des- ignated a Central Authority to handle incoming and outgoing applications. Following the 1988 passage of the International Child Remedies Act that implemented the convention in the United States, the Department of State was designated to fulfill the responsibilities of our Central Authority. However, under a special agreement between the State and Justice Departments, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children handles incoming Hague cases. (NCMEC’s outstanding ability to locate missing children within the United States is just one of the reasons why this arrangement has proven to be a successful example of public-private partnership.) Article 3 of the Hague Convention lists five requirements that must be met to file an application: (1) the con- vention must be in force between the two countries at the time the child is abducted, (2) the child must be under the age of 16, (3) prior to the abduc- tion, the child must have been “habit- ually resident” in the country from which taken and to which the return is sought, (4) the applicant must have had some form of custodial rights at the time the child was removed or retained, and (5) the applicant must have been actually exercising those rights. Even if those conditions are all met, the convention defines a few excep- tions to return. If the court in the country where the application for return is filed determines that the return of the child will cause grave physical or psychological harm, the application can be denied. Last year, a A P R I L 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 59 HAGUE CONVENTION OF 25 OCTOBER 1980 ON THE CIVIL ASPECTS OF INTERNATIONAL CHILD ABDUCTION Party Countries and Effective Dates with U.S. ARGENTINA 1 June 1991 AUSTRALIA 1 July 1988 AUSTRIA 1 October 1988 BAHAMAS 1 January 1994 BELGIUM 1 May 1999 BELIZE 1 November 1989 BOSNIA & HERZ. 1 December 1991 BURKINO FASO 1 November 1992 CANADA 1 July 1988 CHILE 1 July 1994 CHINA - Hong Kong 1 September 1997 - Macau 1 March 1999 COLOMBIA 1 June 1996 CROATIA 1 December 1991 CZECH REPUBLIC 1 March 1998 CYPRUS 1 March 1995 DENMARK 1 July 1991 ECUADOR 1 April 1992 FINLAND 1 August 1994 FRANCE 1 July 1988 GERMANY 1 December 1990 GREECE 1 June 1993 HONDURAS 1 June 1994 HUNGARY 1 July 1988 ICELAND 1 December 1996 IRELAND 1 October 1991 ISRAEL 1 December 1991 ITALY 1 May 1995 LUXEMBOURG 1 July 1988 FMR. YUGOSLAV REP. OF MACEDONIA 1 December 1991 MALTA 1 February 2003 MAURITIUS 1 October 1993 MEXICO 1 October 1991 MONACO 1 June 1993 NETHERLANDS 1 September 1990 NEW ZEALAND 1 October 1991 NORWAY 1 April 1989 PANAMA 1 June 1994 POLAND 1 November 1992 PORTUGAL 1 July 1988 ROMANIA 1 June 1993 SLOVAK REPUBLIC 1 February 2001 SLOVENIA 1 April 1995 SOUTH AFRICA 1 November 1997 SPAIN 1 July 1988 ST. KITTS AND NEVIS 1 June 1995 SWEDEN 1 June 1989 SWITZERLAND 1 July 1988 TURKEY 1 August 2000 UNITED KINGDOM 1 July 1988 Bermuda 1 March 1999 Cayman Islands 1 August 1998 Falkland Islands 1 June 1998 Isle of Man 1 September 1991 Montserrat 1 March 1999 VENEZUELA 1 January 1997 YUGOSLAVIA, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF 1 December 1991 ZIMBABWE 1 August 1995