Talk:Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction

Map update
I would suggest to mark also French Guyana in blue. It is part of France, which signed the convention. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.223.245.146 (talk) 13:01, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Also brazil is not showing as having ratified the convention on the map, while the table at the end of the article shows that the convention entered into force in 2010 for Brazil. 176.11.45.53 (talk) 15:48, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Opening heading
Has anybody ever experienced a parental abduction and filed a Hague Convention case?

RMP11301

Japan
Would the article benefit from mention of Japan's not having signed on? That could be seen as singling out one country, but Japan seems a notable exception especially in light of recent cases, and there are plenty of reliable sources that have singled out Japan. Respectfully, RomaC (talk) 01:50, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Looking at the map, it look like the division between the West (signatory) and the rest (non signatory). Given the ease of divorce and large number of immigration by marriage, the initial custody ruling must happen in the West. Not many countries willingly sign up to a treaty which doesn't favour them. Vapour (talk) 20:59, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I felt that this article should have a section "Critics & Dicsussions"; one issue is "domestic violence" and another issue is inconsistency to "Convention on the right of child". In such section, discussions both in signatory and non signatory can be discussed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 113.39.190.151 (talk) 16:12, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Specific criticism-sections are discouraged on wikipedia, as the criticism should already be present in the text. That is now absent. So feel free to add some sentences (with sources!)... L.tak (talk) 17:18, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Why isn't Japan in the list now? It's somewhat odd to have a picture of it's ratification, but not have it in the list... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.70.244.42 (talk) 21:22, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * It has been added now (the way the table is made is a bit problematic, but I have created a temporary fix). Thanks for the notification! L.tak (talk) 23:16, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

Signatory Countries
Is there a reference/citation for the signatory countries? Also, how about a list instead of a dodgy map? My geography isn't really that grand, which are the middle east countries signed up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.172.94.115 (talk) 20:36, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Practical Application and History
This page is woefully lacking in the area of the practical and historical application of this convention. This convention was signed in 1980, presumably there is also some historical context as to why it was drafted then as well, but it's, as of this writing, 2010. It's been 30 years and the questions bear asking, what are the results of this convention? Are parents more or less likely to get back their children than they were in 1980? Has this convention been a "success" in achieving it's goals? Some key studies indicate it's a wash. What about the rampant non-compliance of some signatories? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cybermud (talk • contribs) 20:16, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Non-Compliance section
As alluded to in the Talk Section on "Practical Application and History" this section is of critical importance to any real article on the Hague Convention. Without a significant expansion of this section the article should be considered a stub. I removed references to several abduction cases in that section that do not meet the noteworthy requirements of Wikipedia articles independently and shouldn't be listed in a general article on the Convention itself specifically (as opposed to article about the Convention and its implementation in Brazil where, even there, they would be a stretch). Because of the worldwide media attention to the Goldman case I have left reference to it in the section though, in spite of it being noteworthy, it probably shouldn't be listed either.--Cybermud (talk) 16:11, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I have removed a series of edits focused entirely on Brazil by Dikaiosynenemesis. They had POV issues when referring to the Goldman case (phrases like "legitimate father") and are of very little relevance to the overall article on the Hague Convention. A discussion of noncompliance in general is critically missing in this article but the focus on Brazil to the exclusion of every other country that does not comply is excessive. Such details on Brazil's implementation of the Hague Convention should be moved to a separate article focused on Brazil similar to the article's that already exist for International child abduction in Mexico and International Parental Kidnapping in Japan--Cybermud (talk) 23:16, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I have reinserted what was removed by Cybermud. These updates are a work in progress and other countries will be added in due course. The links to the Brazilian Central Authority and others are crucial. Also, the term 'legitimate' father is not a POV issue, since David Goldman was not only the biological father (which may imply a degree of illegitimacy in law)but the only legally-recognised one under the Hague Convention. This is crucial because there are cases in Brazil where abducted children have been fraudulently adopted and had ther birth certificates changed. Also, the phrase should not read 'lawyers of the Brazilian elite', since this phrase is both ambiguous and ungrammatical in English. 'Childbirth of another child' is a redundant phrase and should read 'birth of another child'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dikaiosynenemesis (talk • contribs) 09:18, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Cybermud may want to help to update rather than to cut this article by inserting information on Mexico and other countries - including the US. There are more children being held there in contravention of Hague Convention than anywhere else in the world.

Why are links to the Brazilian Central Authority crucial? Does anyone reading the article on the Hague Convention care who Brazil appointed as their Central Authority? Is the fact that SEDH fills that role in Brazil relevant to their non-compliance? For that matter what is the relevance of the fact "Decree No. 3413/00 promulgated the Convention in Brazil?" For an article on an international treaty with some 80 member countries this level of detail about Brazil is inappropriate. As I've stated previously this section, Non-Compliance, is critical to the article but we don't need to write how and why each of the 80 countries that have signed demonstrates some level of noncompliance. This section should, ideally, include a discussion on problems at a higher level, such as mishandling Convention cases as custody cases, judicial ignorance, abuse of Article's 12 and 13 to deny the return of abducted children or the inability of law enforcement to locate children or enforce judicial decisions. Things like gender or national bias and xenophobia would also be appropriate but drawn out details like this on Brazil are not. They are however, great details for an article on Brazil, I've even started it for you with your edits International child abduction in Brazil which I've also, once again removed from this article.--Cybermud (talk) 00:31, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Removed edits to this section by Earpiercing related to claims that the British government has declared the US noncompliant. This was unreferenced and simply not true. UK newspapers (which were not referenced for these edits) have commented on the fact that, after a period of a year had passed, 1/3 of the children abducted from the UK to the US had not been returned. This simple statement of statistical fact was not interpreted by those articles much less a statement from the British government on the non-compliance of the US and did not address the reasons that children were not returned (eg delays, bias, incompetence, appropriate legal defense etc.) I can only assume these edits were misrepresentations of the aforementioned articles (which, again, were not even referenced.)--Cybermud (talk) 16:51, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Limited Defenses to Return
This section uses language which appears to be from the ICARA US implementing legislation for the HC. Specifically things like "clear and convincing evidence" or "by a preponderance of the evidence." The Hague Convention does not use this language and neither do its translations. This needs to be rewritten in a way that calls attention to the actual text used in the corresponding articles of the Convention text. As it stands today the article presents a US biased interpretation of the exceptions to return. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cybermud (talk • contribs) 03:33, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

I concur with Cybermud. The Hague Convention is silent on standards of proof. These are, in most jurisdictions, determined by the "lex fori", i.e. the law of the state where the court is located. "Preponderance of the evidence" may be the standard in the United States, but in a continental European country, i.e. Germany, the standard is "full conviction". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.37.116.3 (talk) 20:03, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Requested Move

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
 * Keep. Ruslik_ Zero 16:53, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction → Hague Abduction Convention — per WP:Common name. Furhtermore, more than 5000 hits in google. Name used by the U.S. in compliance reports (see title) and mentioned also on the HCCH website. Relisted. Andrewa (talk) 05:05, 24 January 2011 (UTC) L.tak (talk) 14:33, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Agree Hague Abduction Convention already redirects to the current name and many of the links to this article use that redirect (in full disclosure though, I created the redirect and many of those links.) Although both names enjoy pretty popular usage my preference would be for the shorter name to be the article name and the longer name to be the redirect as it's completely unambiguous which Convention is being referred to, it's the name most frequently used by the Hague Conference itself and last, and probably least, it's a lot shorter and easier to write and say.--Cybermud (talk) 17:51, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose I'm getting 8,480 results for the target verses 156,000 results for the current name in naked ghits (an 18:1 disparity). Books returns 195 to 3,760; Scholar, 148 to 923 and News Archive, 38 to 6,710 (a 176:1 disparity). The New York Times has 19 articles using the full title and 5 for the target. Lexis returns 67 results verses 1 (searching NY federal and state cases) in the same trend direction. Finally, the redirect gets about 5 hits a day, while the current title gets about 100. All this suggests to me that the current title is the common name by a pretty wide margin.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:49, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Suggest -- Hague Convention on Child Abduction, but retain redirect from full name. Or perhaps it should be the other way around.  Peterkingiron (talk) 14:56, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Move as current name is way too long. The redirects are used because it takes too damn long to type the name. D O N D E groovily   Talk to me  00:22, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I get similar Google results . The name isn't too long for most people, obviously! These shorter names should be (and in some cases are already) served by redirects. Andrewa (talk) 06:29, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Brazil
Brazil must be coloured blue on the map. It is part to the convention. 86.121.72.104 (talk) 08:11, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
 * True. I may change it, but feel free to do so in the mean time.... L.tak (talk) 13:40, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Tunisia
Please update the map by coloring Tunisia in blue, as it has ratified. 2A02:2F01:507F:FFFF:0:0:6465:4924 (talk) 17:55, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

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Edit request (Tunisia)
Please color Tunisia blue on the map, because it has ratified the convention. Source: 2A02:2F01:506F:FFFF:0:0:6465:535D (talk) 02:58, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: The file is hosted on Commons; therefore, it cannot be edited here. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 03:28, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Update map with Cuba
The map must be updated with Cuba, which acceded in 2018, so it must be colored blue on the map. 2A02:2F01:52FF:FFFF:0:0:6465:4439 (talk) 11:16, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Guyana on the map
Please change Guyana on the map to blue, because it acceded to the Convention in 2019. Source: 2A02:2F01:53FF:FFFF:0:0:6465:51A0 (talk)
 * ❌ that is an image, it can't be 'edited' you would need to create an upload a new version. — xaosflux  Talk 20:55, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Canada
Going to be adding a section about the Supreme Court of Canada decision "Office of the Children's Lawyer v Balev" which is the leading case in Canada about the implementation of this convention. Navyvezina95 (talk) 18:06, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Why? We have over 100 parties, so cannot include case law of all... Wouldn’t it be better to have a section of the conclusions of the Special commissions, which are influential regarding all countries... --L.tak (talk) 21:08, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * A courtesy notice-I've proceeded to add an discussion on the Supreme Court of Canada decision of Balev, and the EU, UK, Australia, NZL jurisprudence which echoes the Balev approach. This discussion is important to have because the international jurisprudence, as it stands, really departs from the layman's understanding of child abduction and the original intention of The Hague Convention. Parental intention really doesn't matter that much anymore. The courts decide--not the parents--as to where the parents' child should go. Do let me know your thoughts on my edits, if you disagree. Cheers. Subject to any disagreements, I will next move on to revise and update the section on the Habitual Residence, to reflect how this concept is being understood and analysed by the member states. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 16:47, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I think that makes sense and is well linked internationally. It may be good to look at the special commissions as well to obtain universal information on application (here) L.tak (talk) 18:25, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll review these publications in the near future and update this page accordingly. Thanks for pointing out. I've been personally involved in some of these Hague Convention application as counsel and I can say, there are quite some stuff to update on this page. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 18:34, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, this page could use some expert input I think (I am just an international treaties enthusiast ;-)); and also discussions on the role of an estoppel (ao US supreme court case of some years back) may be useful to expand on. Btw: I found the Canadian decision in INDACAT (here, but contrary to some other decisions in that database, it is not discussed how the decision is linked to other decisions in the field... L.tak (talk) 18:41, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

What a hobby, L.tak x) There are some pretty good discussions on estoppel in the U.S. ninth circuit court case of Mozes v Mozes ���������������, which is one of the best decisions I've came across on The Hague Convention, but is sadly overtaken by international jurisprudence. The Canadian decision can be found at https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2018/2018scc16/2018scc16.html. In general, most of published Canadian decisions can be found on the Canlii website. Paragraph 48 onwards in that decision talks about harmonizing Canadian jurisprudence with the international jurisprudence on the Convention. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 19:13, 29 August 2021 (UTC) I've reviewed the Special Commissions report on the Convention that you linked, as well as other publications on the HCCH website, and my latest rounds of edits were based on these reviews. I believe there's nothing else that's really worth mentioning apart from what I have included in this round of edits. There are some discussions of related conventions such as the 1996 Convention on jurisdiction and enforcement of child protection and discussions about the central authority. Perhaps one way to proceed is to add a new sections to introduce the related conventions, and have a discussion about the central authority. What do you think?HollerithPunchCard (talk) 21:14, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Only showing an image of Japan?
I'm not sure if you're aware, but there's a fairly substantial number of (white) men on the Internet who see the convention as being about protecting the "rights" of white male divorcees of Japanese women (rather than about protecting children from international child abduction). This can be seen in, for example, this case, where the Hague Convention clearly doesn't apply (both parents have lived in Japan since about a decade before the children were born, and the children do not seem to have any connection to their father's original home country, so it's purely about Japanese domestic divorce law, which typically grants full custody to the mother -- a matter on which the Hague Convention is naturally silent). Given this, it seems like a serious WP:WEIGHT and WP:NPOV problem to be feeding these (white) men's rights advocates with this image. I do not know if your reason for uploading only this image but seemingly no other such image was related to this matter, or if you were even aware of it (your edit history implies you are mainly interested in international treaties rather than "men's rights", "issues" affecting white men in Japan, Japanese divorce law, etc.), but if not... what do you make of it? Can you help me locate an image of another country's ratification that doesn't come with this baggage? Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 00:52, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * This was purely a practical matter. The image happened to be available. Other conventions (such as the Hague Maintenance Convention) have other signing images. The problem is that we need a pic from the depositary site, as the HCCH site has a copyright sign. I'll see what I can do if I come across a different image... L.tak (talk) 18:33, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Update the map
Please update the map with Botswana and Cape Verde which are now parties to the convention. Source:. 2A02:2F0F:B10E:6700:257A:F567:5E06:6F32 (talk) 13:17, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Botswana and Cape Verde on the map
The map must be updated by coloring Botswana and Cape Verde blue because they are now parties to the convention. 2A02:2F0F:B10E:6700:7198:A396:97E8:8177 (talk) 16:41, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅: I was able to make the requested change, but WP:GL would be a better place to ask in future. small jars 16:12, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Overhaul / Re-format
Hey folks,

I plan on doing an overhaul on the structure of this page, in order to line up the headings and content with the sections of the convention itself and the INCADAT Analysis provided on the Hague Convention Website (I.e. starting with "Aims and Scope of the Convention" and moving to "Return of Children" and "Exceptions to Return", etc.).

Under each section I will include information about the Convention - the wording and what it means, and then some examples on how countries have interpreted it. (Similar to how the current Habitual Residence section provides an example from EU, CAN and US).

I will also add a table of contents, and a section on "Domestic Legislation" that brings the Hague Convention into force in a specific State / Coutnry, where that information is available. Dgallach (talk) 13:54, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Colour of the map quite diffcult to view.
Hi. I'm thinking that the map may potentially be in for a change of colour, as the two similar shades of blue are relatively difficult to differentiate from each other, and if someone with visual difficulties might find it somewhat difficult to easily determine which colour is which.

I would recommend using green for secondary color, or perhaps yellow. No need for this to happen, rather just a suggestion.

Thanks! 131.242.7.32 (talk) 00:08, 25 October 2023 (UTC)