What is the Hague Convention?
On October 25, 1980, an international convention was held at the Hague. Here, numerous resolutions were adopted that concerned the wrongful removal of children from their home country. The resolutions of the Hague Convention was ratified by the United States in 1988. A parent has one year, as per United States law, to apply under the Hague for the wrongful removal of a child. Under the Hague Convention, a parent may also oppose the return of a child. The parent has the burden of establishing, by clear and convincing evidence, that one of the following exceptions apply. 1. The person was not actually exercising custody rights at the time of the removal or retention or had acquiesced to the removal or retention; 2. There is a grave risk that his or her return would expose the child to physical psychological harm and place the child in an intolerable situation; 3. The child objects to being returned.
The aims of the Hague Convention are: • To secure the prompt return of children who have been wrongfully removed to or retained in a contracting state. (i.e. to return the abducted child back to his or her place of residence.) • And to ensure that rights of residence or contact under the law of one contracting state are effectively respected in other contracting states. (i.e. to ensure contact and residence rights issued in one country are implemented and respected in another.) To rely on the Hague Convention, the child must be under 16 and have been habitually resident in one contracting state and taken to another. Habitual residence: There is no legal definition of habitual residence; it is established depending on the different facts of each case, but generally means where the child has been living and is settled. Wrongfully removed or retained. There must either be: • Wrongful removal, this occurs when a child has been taken from his or her place of habitual residence without the a
The 1993 Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in respect of Intercountry AdoptionLink to an external website is an international system of collaboration that aims to prevent the abduction of, sale of, or traffic in children. The Convention requires that intercountry adoption happens only where it would be in the child’s best interests, that all adopters are assessed and approved as suitable to adopt and that no profit is made from the adoption process. The UK ratified the Convention on 1 June 2003.
On October 25, 1980, an international convention was held at the Hague. Here, numerous resolutions were adopted that concerned the wrongful removal of children from their home country. The resolutions of the Hague Convention was ratified by the United States in 1988. A parent has one year, as per United States law, to apply under the Hague for the wrongful removal of a child. Under the Hague Convention, a parent may also oppose the return of a child. The parent has the burden of establishing, by clear and convincing evidence, that one of the following exceptions apply: • The person was not actually exercising custody rights at the time of the removal or retention or had acquiesced to the removal or retention; • There is a grave risk that his or her return would expose the child to physical psychological harm and place the child in an intolerable situation; • The child objects to being returned.
The Hague Convention is an international treaty that will standardize the way international adoptions are done throughout the world. The Hague will hopefully cut down on the corruption that can sometimes exist in international adoption. Both agencies and national governments will need to be re-accredited under the Hague treaty, which will take a very long time to accomplish. Therefore, there has not been a date set for when agencies need to be under these new regulations. The treaty itself was ratified in 1993, and the regulations for agencies have just come out in recent months. Obviously, this next step towards accreditation will take some time to accomplish. AGCI is actively working on this accreditation, and due to the fact that we already follow so many of these requirements, we expect the transition to be smooth. We are hoping to be one of the first agencies to fall under this new accreditation.
