Hague report lists countries who are not compliant; seek experienced International Divorce and Abduction Attorneys as early as posibile.
The U.S. Department of State Office of Children’s Issues has now submitted its annual report pertaining to compliance problems on international abduction matters for 2013. This “compliance report” identifies countries that are “Not Compliant with the Convention” and countries that show “Patterns of Noncompliance with the Convention”. This 51 page report lists cases that have remained open and active for 18 months or more after the convention application was filed. The report also lists countries with Convention enforcement concerns.
Highlights include:
- Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras were determined to be “non-compliant” with the Convention. Both Costa Rica and Guatemala demonstrated non-compliance in the areas of judicial and central authority performance. Honduras demonstrated non-compliance in the areas of judicial, law enforcement, and central authority performance.
- Brazil and the Bahamas have showed “patterns of noncompliance” with the Hague. Bahamian courts improperly treat Hague cases as custody matters, not in an expedited fashion that is required. Brazil’s issues seem to center with the long court review process, problems locating the child and all the permitted appeals.
- Four countries were categorized as “Countries with
After years of intense pressure from the United States government and governments of the European Union, the government of Japan recently announced its intention to join the Hague Convention relative to child custody. At the present time, Japan is the only major industrialized country that has not signed the treaty. And, Japan is the only member of the Group of Seven (G-7) leading nations which is not a party to the treaty. The G-7 countries which have adopted the Hague Convention are France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
On October 24, 2009, our Ohio Family Law Blog published an article entitled, 
For those of you that read our Ohio Family Law Blog regularly, you are familiar with problems that may arise when your children travel internationally. Specifically, one parent may abduct your child to his or her home country. Another issue may be that you send your child to visit his or her parent in another country and that parent refuses to allow the child to return. If the country that the child is in is a signatory to the Hague Convention, there are mechanisms that may assist the parent in obtaining the child’s return. This process, however, can be costly, time consuming, and produce uncertain results. So you ask, what steps can you take to protect your child from ever being placed in that position?
Christopher Savoie (“Father”) was arrested in Japan on September 28, 2009, for trying to take his two (2) children, Isaac Savoie, eight (8) years of age, and Rebecca Savoie, six (6) years of age, away from their Mother, Noriko Savoie, while she was walking the children to school. Father forcibly placed the two children into his car and drove towards the U.S. Embassy or Consulate Office in Fukuoka, Japan. His goal was to get the children into the U.S. Consulate Office in order to obtain passports for the children so that he could return them to the United States.