| Convention of 19 October 1996 on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and Co-operation in respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures for the Protection of Children | |
|---|---|
| Signed | 19 October 1996 |
| Location | The Netherlands |
| Effective | 1 January 2002 |
| Condition | Ratification by 3 states |
| Parties | 33 (ratifications) |
| Depositary | Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Netherlands) |
| Languages | English and French |
The Convention of 19 October 1996 on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and Co-operation in respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures for the Protection of Children or Hague Convention 1996 is a convention of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH). It covers civil measures of protection concerning children, ranging from orders concerning parental responsibility and contact to public measures of protection or care, and from matters of representation to the protection of children’s property. It is therefore much broader in scope than two earlier conventions of the HCCH on the subject.
The Convention has uniform rules determining which country’s authorities are competent to take the measures of protection. The Convention determines which country’s laws are to be applied, and it provides for the recognition and enforcement of measures taken in one Contracting State in all other Contracting States. The co-operation provisions of the Convention provide the basic framework for the exchange of information and for the necessary degree of collaboration between administrative authorities in the Contracting States.
The convention is in force since 1 January 2002 and has 33 Contracting States (as of 15 August 2011). In addition, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States signed the convention, but did not ratify.
Contents |
The 1996 Convention aims to to bring justice and relief to parents and children dispersed over different states. It aims at prevention of international child abduction and provide a secure legal framework for cross-border contact between children and their parents when families separate. It establishes a framework for the co-ordination of legal systems, and for international judicial and administrative co-operation. The convention details and specifies many objectives of the almost universally ratified United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children, and complement the widely ratified Hague conventions on Child Abduction and on inter-country adoption.
The Hague Conference has, for more than a century, been involved in measures of protection under civil law of children at risk in cross-frontier situations. Three Hague Children’s Conventions have been developed over the last twenty-five years, a fundamental purpose being to provide the practical machinery to enable States which share a common interest in protecting children to co-operate together to do so.
The 1996 convention is the broadest in scope of those three, covering as it does a very wide range of civil measures of protection concerning children, ranging from orders concerning parental responsibility and contact to public measures of protection or care, and from matters of representation to the protection of children’s property. It also covers:
Implementation in the member states of the European Union was delayed as a result of the Gibraltar dispute between Spain and the United Kingdom. In January 2008 an agreement was reached to resolve the situation to allow progress on this and other treaties. Britain and Spain compromised on a so-called "post-boxing" system under which communications between Spain and Gibraltar involving the treaties will go through London.[1] After this deal the convention entered into force for several EU countries (including Spain), but not yet for the United Kingdom.