General Resources
1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction
- The Hague Convention is a multilateral treaty
- The Hague Convention’s goal is to protect children from wrongful removal and/or retention across international boundaries.
- It sets a civil remedy procedure for a parent who is seeking:
- the return of their child who was removed or retained in another country; or
- for access rights to a child, when the parents are living in separate countries
- In order to file a petition seeking the return of a child pursuant to the Hague Convention:
- both the country from which the child was removed from + the country to where the child is now residing
- must be contracting states + have accepted the accessions of the other state
International Child Abduction Remedies Act (ICARA)
- ICARA (22 U.S.C. § 9101 et seq.) is the federal statute that establishes the procedure to file a Hague Convention petition in a United States court.
- The Hague petition must be filed in the state or federal court where the child is currently residing
Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act
- State-specific statutes providing a procedure to obtain and enforce custody and visitation orders across state lines or foreign countries that are not both Hague contracting parties.
- All states, with the exception of Massachusetts, have some version of the “UCCJEA” codified in their state statute.
- Legal database on international child abduction law
State Dept. Hague application in English
This project is supported by Grant No. 15JOVW-23-GK-05481-MUMU awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication/program/exhibition are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.