Holiday abductions: far from home (Pt 2)

• The Hague Convention exists to secure the swift return of children who have been wrongly removed from their home country.
• However, when a child has been abducted to a country that is not part of the Convention, securing their return can be much more difficult.

In the July edition of NLJ, I published ‘Holiday abductions: far from home’ (NLJ, 22 July 2022, p8), which touched upon the 1980 Hague Convention in respect of wrongful removal/retention cases when a child does not return from a planned holiday. This article considers the limitations (if any) of the Hague Convention 1980.

Barriers to a swift return

The Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (‘the Convention’) is a treaty developed by the Hague Conference on Private International Law. At the time of writing, there are 101 contracting parties to the Convention.

There