The 1996 Hague Convention is now in force in the UK, and as a result children from the UK will have international protection if they move to another country outside the European Union.
The Government has welcomed the move to better protect children across borders and will honour the agreement by providing the same protection in the UK for children from other countries.
The 1996 Hague Child Protection Convention provides for co-operation among States Parties on a wide range of cross-border child protection matters, e.g., parental disputes over contact with children, the protection of runaway children and cross-border care.
The 1996 Convention will now be used in a wide range of court decisions involving children moving from and to participating countries outside the European Union, including:
- who can have parental responsibility, to what extent and how it can be used,
- rights of custody including rights relating to the care of the child and in particular the right to decide the child's place of residence,
- rights of access, which are rights about contact with the child, including the right to take the child for a limited period of time to a place other than where the child is habitually resident,
- who is to be the guardian of the child, who is to look after the child or the child's property or represent the child, and what they are allowed to do,
- the placement of a child in a foster family or in institutional care or in wider family care such as kafala or similar, and
- the management of the child's property for the purposes of the protection of the child.
Contains information sourced from the Hague Conference on Private International Law.