The Hague Children's Conventions: The Internationalization of Child Law
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Description
The theme of this chapter is the internationalization of ‘child law,’ a trend which can be expected to continue into the twenty-first century. Family-law matters more generally have been the subject of a number of international conventions throughout the last century, but the emphasis on children has been a late twentieth-century development. During the course of the last century, the Hague Conference on Private International Law, which concentrates largely on issues of choice of law and jurisdiction rather than substantive provisions, developed conventions on marriage, divorce, support, adoption, protection of children, and matrimonial property. However, with the exception of the Conventions on support, these Conventions did not have widespread adoptions and as a result were not particularly successful. The jurisdiction and choice of law model used for other Hague Conference Conventions seemed too theoretical and abstract to address successfully important issues of family law; at the same time, obtaining agreement on ‘substantive’ provisions among countries with very different cultural and legal traditions seemed even less likely to achieve success. Despite these odds, the three recent ‘Children’s Conventions’, concluded by the Hague Conference on Private International Law in the last two decades, managed to find significant areas of commonality and to create a framework for establishing international standards on issues relating to children. In addition to the jurisdictional and procedural provisions usually found in Hague Conventions, the Conventions introduced various structures for intercountry administrative and judicial co-operation on matters involving children. The three Conventions are: (1) the 1980 Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, (2) the 1996 Convention on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement, and Co-operation in Respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures for the Protection of Children, and (3) the 1993 Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. The three Conventions have an ‘operational’ focus, ie they provide specific rules and institute particular mechanisms for achieving their objectives. In contrast, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is aspirational in character. Like the Hague Conventions, it signifies the globalization of child law, but the general and open-ended nature of its provisions are less likely to have a direct impact on day-to-day cross-border issues relating to children. This essay offers an overview of the three Hague Conventions; it describes each Convention’s solution for achieving its objective: deterring international child abductions (the Abduction Convention), recognizing measures and enforcing international custody decrees across transnational borders (the Protection Convention), and facilitating intercountry adoptions (the Adoption Convention). The essay concludes with observations about the internationalization of children’s issues as the new millennium begins.
Source Publication
Cross Currents: Family Law and Policy in the United States and England
Source Editors/Authors
Sanford N. Katz, John Eekelaar, Mavis Maclean
Publication Date
2000
Recommended Citation
Silberman, Linda J., "The Hague Children's Conventions: The Internationalization of Child Law" (2000). Faculty Chapters. 1435.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1435
