International child custody disputes and New Zealand

Media have highlighted the number of New Zealand children caught up in international child custody disputes. In 2012, 92 children were taken offshore to countries that have signed the Hague Convention, the majority to Australia. The international Hague Convention on child abduction requires children wrongfully removed to be returned to the country they habitually reside in for custody disputes to be resolved.

In the context of family violence, this can require women fleeing to safety with their children to return their children to an abusive father. Taryn Lindhorst and Jeffrey Edleson have published a book on these issues, Battered women, their children, and international law: The unintended consequences of the Hague Child Abduction Convention (2012), which is available for loan from the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse.

Jeff Edleson and Sudha Shetty also gave a presentation, Seeking Safety Across Borders: Battered Women’s Experiences with the Hague Convention in American Courts, at the conference co-hosted by the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse and the Families Commission in June 2013.

Information on child abduction and the Hague Convention is also available from the Ministry of Justice website.

Media:

'Kiwi tug-of-love children on the rise', Stuff, 5.08.2013

Image: Aeroplane - Faro - The Algarve, Portugal, Glen Bowman, Newcastle, England Licence: Creative Commons CC-BY-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons