Norway to implement the Hague convention on child abduction –
unfortunate development for families targeted by the child protection authorities

The Norwegian government now wants Norway to implement the Hague convention on child abduction.

Økt beskyttelse av barn (Increased protection of children)
Regjeringen (the Government), 17 April 2015

Most people only think of this convention as relevant when one parent takes the children away from the other parent and moves abroad with them. And this is the way the issue is presented, e.g in this account from the government on 29 August 2013:
To/from a Contracting state - the Hague Convention

*

For people whom the child protective service (CPS) attacks, however, the situation is even worse than for a parent in custody disputes with the other parent: The children are taken away by the CPS from both parents and from all their family. If parents succeed in leaving Norway with their children after the CPS has a binding decision of taking over custody, the CPS has the legal rights to the children and will pursue them abroad and demand them back to institutional or foster home care. (9 October 2017: Further legislation has given the CPS this right even before any binding decision has been made; it is enough for the CPS to announce to a County Committee that they want to take the child into care.)

There have already been several cases where Norwegian authorities try to effect this, by making a formal demand to the foreign authorities concerned, even by carrying out a court case in the other country.

See especially this case from 2011 of a Polish family, in which Norwegian CPS and the state's legal establishment show their way of thinking very clearly:
Judgment in Poland: a nine-year-old girl NOT to be extradited to Norway

Also confer:
How Norway will undermine Czech intentions for the family, for the protection of children, and for human rights

With the Hague convention the position of the Norwegian CPS and other authorities will be even stronger, and there is no doubt whatsoever that they will spend unlimited time and resources to have returned to Norway every child whom the CPS wants in their clutches. Other countries who try to resist Norway's inhuman destruction of children's ties with their families, will be increasingly helpless to protect the children and their parents from it. What Norway declares to be better protection of children is the opposite, cf the incredibly dark statistics of the results of foster care and the large number of children who try to escape from it and are hunted down by the CPS and the police.

*

The focus on foster care is indeed clear in the government's last proposal. The Norwegian government turns the CPS cases of foreign children in Norway, cases which have received prominent publicity abroad lately, and in which the authorities of the families' home countries have tried to help them against Norwegian CPS, into a question of "finding solutions" in the extra demanding task of "protecting these children" because the children are said to "have attachment" to – more than one country:

"Departementene og norske utenriksstasjoner har de siste årene hatt økende pågang fra utenlandske myndigheter og privatpersoner i enkeltsaker om barn i Norge. Norske myndighetere blir ofte bedt om å gripe inn i sakene eller tilrettelegge for å finne løsninger, blant annet i barnevernsaker på tvers av landegrenser.
    Stadig flere barn har tilknytning til flere land. Et barn kan være statsborger i én stat, bo i en annen og oppholde seg i en tredje. Barn med tilhørighet til flere land, kan være mer utsatt og det kan være ekstra krevende å ivareta og beskytte disse barna."
(The government departments and Norwegian representation abroad have these last few years faced an influx of foreign authorities and private persons in single cases regarding children in Norway. Norwegian authorities are often asked to intervene in the cases or arrange for the finding of solutions, e.g in child protection cases across the countries' borders.
    An increasing number of children have ties to several countries. A child may be a citizen of one country, live in another and be staying in a third. Children belonging to several countries can be more exposed and it can be extra demanding to take care of and protect these children.)

Here, as elsewhere in Norwegian politically correct presentation of the realities, a child's parents – the vitally central people for a child's happiness – are totally absent from Norwegian ideology.

The last two out of three points announced by the government to be important advantages of implementing the Hague Convention concern CPS matters directly, not custody disputes between parents. Point 2 declares:
"At det kan treffes vedtak om omsorgsovertakelse når et barn har vanlig bosted i Norge, selv om barnet oppholder seg i utlandet. Forslaget kan hindre at foreldre unndrar seg et barnevernvedtak ved å reise fra Norge." (That decisions can be made of the taking into public care when a child is normally resident in Norway, even if the child is abroad. The proposal can prevent parents from avoiding a child protection decision by leaving Norway.)

The same is repeated in an article, with the same title as the government's announcement, by the Minister of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion Solveig Horne:
Økt beskyttelse av barn
Stavanger Aftenblad, 23 April 2015
  
*

When, at the same time, legislation will be processed making it a criminal offense even to take one's child out of Norway when the CPS has made an interim, emergency decision, i.e before the decision has been confirmed by any court or even by the County Committee (cf Here it comes – the parliamentary proposal of criminalising taking children back from acute / temporary placement away from the family), then people should not even need any writing on the wall to assess the situation. And naïve countries, looking to Scandinavia as a model of human rights and the rule of law, would do well to go into matters more thoroughly and perhaps reconsider the scope of their cooperation with Norway. Concern for their own citizens with children seeking refuge from Norway's attacks back home – and perhaps for other refugees – would seem more important.
  


  

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Hjemmeside http://www.mhskanland.net

  

20 June 2015


The Hague convention in Norway – changes in legislation now in place

Norway implements the Hague convention and the relevant legislative changes are announced. They express increased criminalisation of parents, and increased possibility for Norway to demand children extradited from abroad. To take a child away from the social services in Norway after an interim acute decision is also criminalised.


Prop. 143 L (2014–2015)
Endringer i barnebortføringsloven, barnevernloven, straffeloven 2005 og rettshjelploven (internasjonal barnebortføring)
(Changes in the child abduction law, the child protection law, the criminal law of 2005 and the law pertaining to legal assistance)

Tilråding fra Justis- og beredskapsdepartementet 19. juni 2015, godkjent i statsråd samme dag. (Regjeringen Solberg)
(Recommendation from the Ministry of Justice and Public Security of 19 June 2015, approved in cabinet meeting on the same day.)


The complete document (Norwegian text)


A short announcement about the matter in some newspapers:

Regjeringa vil gjere det lettare å hente heim bortførte barn (The government will make it easier to fetch abducted children home)
Hordaland, 19 June 2015

"Det gir oss også eit endå betre grunnlag for å utøve påtrykk i saker der barn er bortførte frå Norge, seier justis- og beredskapsminister Anders Anundsen (Frp)." ("This provides a still better basis for putting pressure on in cases in which children have been abducted from Norway, says the minister of justice and public security Anders Anundsen (Frp).)

The same in
Adresseavisen
Altaposten


Bufdir (the government's directorate of children, youth and family) has a longer description of the contents:
Norge skal slutte seg til Haagkonvensjonen 1996 (Norway to implement the Hague convention of 1996)
Bufdir, 19 June 2015

There is every reason to pay attention to the following:

"Ratifikasjon av konvensjonen vil gi Norge et nytt virkemiddel for å forebygge og løse internasjonale foreldretvister, barnevernsaker og barnebortføringssaker – og kan legge til rette for mer langsiktige omsorgsløsninger for de aktuelle barna."
      "Det er vedtatt en egen lov om gjennomføring av Haagkonvensjonen 1996, samt endringer i barneloven, barnevernloven og ekteskapsloven. Barnelovens bestemmelse om jurisdiksjon endres slik at «vanlig bosted» blir det generelle jurisdiksjonsgrunnlaget i alle saker om foreldreansvar mv.
        Det er videre vedtatt endringer i barneloven som blant annet vil bidra til å forebygge barnebortføring, og motvirke at barn etterlates i utlandet:
• Det presisere nærmere i hvilke tilfeller foreldre må samtykke for at barnet kan flytte til eller ta opphold i et annet land: Barneloven endres for å presisere at samtykke skal innhentes også der et avtalt opphold forlenges eller endres, inkludert der barnet etterlates.
• Det innføres krav om samtykke fra barn over 12 for å kunne flytte til eller ta opphold i utlandet alene – når dette skjer uten forelder med foreldreansvar.
• Foreldre gis rett til å reise sak for domstolen om flytting med barnet ut av landet.
      Endringene i barnevernloven innebærer at det kan treffes vedtak om omsorgsovertakelse når et barn har vanlig bosted i Norge, selv om barnet oppholder seg i utlandet. Endringen kan hindre at foreldre unndrar seg et barnevernvedtak ved å reise fra Norge.
      Det er også vedtatt å innføre en bestemmelse som gir mulighet til frivillig fosterhjems- og institusjonsplassering i andre konvensjonsland."

(Ratification will give Norway a new tool to prevent and solve international parental disputes, child protection cases and child abduction cases – and can prepare the ground for more long term care arrangements for the children in question.
      A law is passed for the implementation of the Hague convention of 1996, as well as changes to the law of parents and children, to the law of child protection, and to the law of marriage. The provision about jurisdiction in the law of parents and children is changed so that "ordinary place of dwelling" is the general basis for jurisdiction in all cases regarding parental responsibility etc.
      Furthermore, changes to the law of parents and children are passed which will contribute to the prevention of child abduction, and counteract children being left abroad;
• It is stated in some detail in which cases parents must give consent for the child to move to or stay in another country: The law of parents and children is changed to emphasise that consent must also be obtained when a previously approved stay is extended or changed, including when the child is left abroad.)
• It is required that a child over the age of 12 must consent in order for the child to move to or stay abroad alone – when this takes place without a parent with parental responsibility.
• Parents are given the right to go to court regarding moving abroad with the child.
      The changes in the child protection law make it possible to pass a decision about transfer of care to the child protection services when a child's normal place of residence is Norway, even if the child is staying abroad. The change can prevent parents from avoiding a child protection decision by leaving Norway.
      A provision is also passed which will make possible voluntary fosterhome and institutional placement in other convention countries.)

- -

'Barneloven' – the law of children and parents – primarily concerns the relationship between the two parents in relation to the child, although the child protection service (the CPS) often does its utmost to interfere and make decisions in such cases too, and certainly not necessarily in the child's best interest. The central statute for people affected by the CPS is 'barnevernsloven' (the law of child protection, officially called 'the child welfare act' in English), and the issues arising when the CPS is planning or have already obtained approval for the CPS themselves having 'parental responsibility' – legal custody.

As will be understood, it will now be open for Norway to act even more fervently towards the authorities of other countries, demanding that children be returned to Norway if they have had their "regular residence here". It will now be much easier to carry this through, probably Norwegians authorities will not even need to go to court about it, as in the courtcase Norway took to a Polish court in order to have a Polish girl extradited from her parents back to a CPS institution in Norway.

In the case India / Stavanger (the thread is mainly kept in Norwegian but there are many links to articles in English), Norwegian CPS first kept the children's uncle, the father's brother, in Norway for months, allegedly to teach him how the children had to be treated, before he was allowed to take the children back to India. These long-winded 'procedures' were kept up, and Norwegian foreign ministry authorities allowed the CPS to decide, in spite of the fact that there was strong, clearly voiced pressure from India, right up to the Indian prime minister, on Norway to let the children go. (Norway has, in other words, given the CPS full sovereignty and refuses to exercise any kind of rule or management over the CPS. In this Indian case, Jonas Gahr Støre, who was Norway's Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, said with a laugh that all of Norway's trade interests with India had been in the hands of Stavanger CPS.) In the process to have the children freed from Norwegian foster homes and back to India, extreme pressure was put on the children's mother Sagarika, whom the CPS had completely unjustifiedly branded as mentally ill, to get her to sign away all rights to go to court in India. When she did get back to India, she was treated as an enemy by the children's uncle and the rest of her husband's family, who then had the children with them. Possibly, there was some kind of arrangement between them and Stavanger CPS that they should keep the mother away from the children. Sagarika did succeed, however, in getting competent help from lawyers, medical personnel and local CPS in India, so that she got her children back. The leader of Stavanger CPS, Gunnar Toresen, then said to Norwegian newspapers that that development meant that they would never let children get away to other countries in the future.

In a case Malaysia / Sverige the point was explicitly made on the part of Sweden that Swedish CPS still had the formal right of care over the children, even after permission had been given for the children to return to Malaysia. The Swedish social service (= child protection authority) were to receive (and did receive) weekly reports from Malaysia: "the Malaysian Welfare Department had been providing weekly reports to the Sweden Social Services to keep authorities there informed of all four children’s well-being, as required.", and would have been able to intervene as they pleased. Very likely Malaysia had to accept such an agreement when their deputy foreign minister travelled to Sweden to get the children home.

*

The last two paragraphs translated above from Bufdir's account really speak for themselves:

      "The changes in the child protection law make it possible to pass a decision about transfer of care to the child protection services when a child's normal place of residence is Norway, even if the child is staying abroad. The change can prevent parents from avoiding a child protection decision by leaving Norway.
      A provision is also passed which will make possible voluntary fosterhome and institutional placement in other convention countries.)"

The Hague convention will give Norway greater power, both legally and in practice. This power Norway will use to exert further influence on other countries in the direction of employing our Western World kind of 'child protection'. Especially, Norway will vigorously make propaganda for this in naïve countries that believe the Nordic 'welfare states' are exemplary.

Norway will make it increasingly difficult to take children abroad at all if the CPS has even started looking at the family, and Norway will carry out increased monitoring. Norwegian CPS is informally active already, under the auspices of the Norwegian Seamen's Churces, in places abroad where there is a considerable Norwegian population, like Spain and Thailand. They send reports home.

Norway will make it increasingly difficult to sign out of the Norwegian census register, if somebody has succeeded in taking their children with them and has left. By refusing to record the move in the register, Norway can and will claim that the child is just "staying/visiting" in another country and still "has its regular place of residence in Norway".

In cases where the other country (the parents' homeland) tries to have the children handed over from Norway, Norway will demand that if so, the children must not be allowed to have anything to do with their parents or other relatives there, but must be placed in foster homes approved by Norwegian CPS or in an institution in the other country. Norway will, like Sweden in the Malaysian case, to be very active in supervising this, and will with energy pursue the children with demands for extradition back to Norway from the other country if the children's lives in the other country does not turn out in a way which pleases Norwegian CPS.

  

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Hjemmeside http://www.mhskanland.net

  

If what the text in this video says is correct, Norway has tried to use the Hague convention exactly to have a girl, 14 years old, handed over by Iceland, to be taken to foster home in Norway. Iceland seems to have said no.

Then there is (by audio) a telephone conversation between an enquirer and a CPS functionary, the enquirer asking whether the CPS has any definition of "the best interest of the child". – The whole conversation is a screamingly funny illustration of how the CPS works.

Kongsberg Barnevern in Norway, lost their claim in High Court Iceland..
amazing too on youtube, 1 May 2016

  

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Hjemmeside http://www.mhskanland.net

  

The convention is in force in Norway from 1 July 2016:

Press release:
1996 Hague Convention enters into force in Norway
Office of the Prime Minister, 1 July 2016

  

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Hjemmeside http://www.mhskanland.net

  

Negative reactions in India to proposal that India should accede to the Hague Convention

Some comments and a link to an important article by dr Nandita Chaudhary here.

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Hjemmeside http://www.mhskanland.net

  

Why should India not sign the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction?
Lawyers Collective, (no date)


Centre rethinks joining Hague child custody pact
The Hindu, 19 September 2017


Lawyers Collective Urges Centre To Not Sign Hague Convention On Civil Aspects Of International Child Abduction [Read Submission]
Lawyers Hangout, 30 September 2017


  

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Hjemmeside http://www.mhskanland.net

  

Next US Envoy Concerned Over India Not Signing Hague Convention
The Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (1980), provides for a mechanism to return a child internationally abducted by a parent from one member country to another
NDTV, 5 October 2017


A very one-sided view. It even seems uninformed. Kenneth Juster, USA's next envoy to India, and senator Rob Portman talk touchingly of American children being abducted to India, presumably by an Indian parent, the American parent not being able to see them. They have nothing to say – or at least the article hasn't – about Indian children being abducted to America, the Indian parent being excluded from the child's life.

But the most serious, to my mind, is that they portray the issue as being solely one between a child's two parents. No mention of a hyperactive social service using the Hague Convention to their hearts' content against BOTH parents:
"Among the dirty tricks which Norwegian authorities have tried to win through with, is to demand the case be tried as an abduction case under the Hague Convention. .... Poland has luckily not given in to Norway in this; they have treated the case as an ordinary child protection case, with submission of evidence, and have placed great emphasis on the fact that the girl was not happy in the 'temporary foster home' but wanted to be with her parents"
Judgment in Poland: a nine-year-old girl NOT to be extradited to Norway

"India is placed second after Mexico when it comes to children being forced to return to the country by a parent in cases of marital discord."

Being forced? Is that necessarily the case? Do all children want to stay in America no matter what? Are Mr Juster and Mr Portman quite as ingenuous as they appear to be here?

  

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Hjemmeside http://www.mhskanland.net

  

Norway is apparently intensifying the work of employing the Hague Convention. This is a job advertisement, in which the Directorate of children, youth and family invites applicants from jurists:


Internasjonal sentralmyndighet for barnevernsområde søker jurist!  (International central authority for the child protection sector seeks jurist!)
finn.no, 17 November 2017

Arbeidsgiver           Barne-, ungdoms- og familiedirektoratet
Stillingstittel          Jurist Haag
Frist                       01.12.2017
Varighet                 Fast

"Enheten er norsk sentralmyndighet for Haagkonvensjonen 19. oktober 1996 om jurisdiksjon, lovvalg, anerkjennelse, fullbyrdelse og samarbeid vedrørende foreldremyndighet og tiltak for beskyttelse av barn (Haagkonvensjonen 1996). I tillegg til konvensjonssakene håndterer enheten også informasjonsutveksling og veiledning i internasjonale barnevernssaker med utspring i stater som ikke er tilsluttet konvensjonen. Videre bistår enheten kommuner og utenlandske myndigheter med informasjon om behandlingen av barnevernssaker der barn har tilknytning til andre land. Enheten er plassert i direktørens stab.
(The unit is the Norwegian central authority for the Hague Convention of 19 October 1996 about jurisdiction, choice of legislation, recognition, enforcement and cooperation regarding parental authority and measures for the protection of children (the Hague Convention 1996). In addition to the Convention cases, the unit also handles the exchange of information and guidance in international child protection cases which have their source in countries that are not members of the Convention. Furthermore, the unit assists municipalities and foreign authorities with information about the procedures in child protection cases concerning children with ties to other countries. The unit is placed on the staff of the director.
My translation - MH Skånland)

Arbeidsoppgaver/ansvarsområder
Vi søker en motivert medarbeider som ønsker å bidra til utvikling av arbeidet med internasjonalt rettslig samarbeid for beskyttelse av barn. Oppgavene vil bestå i å samarbeide med andre lands sentralmyndigheter, norsk utenrikstjeneste og norske kommuner, håndtere henvendelser fra både norske og utenlandske myndigheter samt privatpersoner i henhold til konvensjonen, og å bidra med god informasjon nasjonalt og internasjonalt både om barnevern og om konvensjonens virkeområde. Regelverksfortolkning, veiledning samt deltakelse i bilaterale og internasjonale møter vil utgjøre en del av arbeidsoppgavene. Videre kan utvikling av retningslinjer og veiledere innenfor enhetens områder bli aktuelt.
    Noe reisevirksomhet må påregnes."
(Tasks / areas of responsibility
We are looking for a motivated colleague wishing to contribute to developing the work of international legal cooperation for protection of children. The duties will consist in cooperating with the central authorities of other countries, with the Norwegian diplomatic service and Norwegian municipalities, take in hand enquiries both from Norwegian and foreign authorities and from private individuals according to the Convention, and to contribute good information nationally and internationally about child protection as well as about the scope and extent of the Convention. Interpretation of the regulations, advice, and participation in bilateral and international meetings will be part of the duties of the position. The development of guidelines and guide-books may also come to be part of the work.
    Some measure of travel will be necessary.
My translation – MH Skånland)

  

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8 November 2017


The Hague Convention in India? What a pity

By Marianne Haslev Skånland
Professor Emeritus
Oslo, Norway


There have been several interesting articles in papers and on websites in India about the question of whether India should sign the Hague convention relating to international disputes over where children should live (usually automatically called a problem of 'child abduction').

Dr. Nandita Chaudhary has seen the depth of the problems and the danger of easy, mechanical rules. Part 1, International Interventions in Matters Relating to Children, in her article Protecting Indian Childhood published on SaveYourChildren in an extended version on 25 September 2017, takes up the Hague Convention:
"Last week, the Government invited comments from the public on whether India should accede to the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (Hague Convention). This treaty would require us to forcibly deport children from their families to any foreign “person”, “institution” or “other body” claiming custodial rights to the child, without consideration, except on very restricted grounds, of whether this would be appropriate for the welfare, security or happiness of the child.
In response, there has been a volley of protests from the public, including parents who have lost their children in custodial disputes in America, and are denied even tourist visas to visit them."

Apparently, the United States in particular is putting pressure on India: official USA is strongly of the opinion that children who have been living in the USA and whose parents split up, should almost automatically stay in the USA with the parent there, if the other parents goes to live in the other country. The website of NDTV has brought several articles about the question, among them Next US Envoy Concerned Over India Not Signing Hague Convention, 5 October 2017.

It seems in this article that US Senator Mr Portman and diplomat Mr Juster are incredibly one-sided, although it is difficult to believe that they are quite as ingenuous as they appear to be.

Senator Portman talks of "an expedited mechanism to .... help return abducted kids to their rightful homes." Surely the USA is not the one and only rightful place for everyone to live, regardless of circumstances?

Mr Portman goes further: He apparently talks of "children being forced to return to the country by a parent in cases of marital discord." Being forced? How does he know? A child has two roots. If one parent comes from another country and is going to return there, then surely it is not certain that a child's only happiness lies in staying on in America, whether it was born there or not, whether it holds citizenship there or not?

The very best thing for a child is to grow up with a harmonious and close relationship to both parents and to the families on both sides. It is a tragedy when one parent without just cause hinders contact with the other parent. Living far apart nevertheless happens, and sometimes seems the only way. To proclaim that the moving parent is self-evidently to be blamed and that the child must stay put no matter what, has little to do with justice or children's best interest.

Mr Portman and Mr Juster seem to brush off, as irrelevant or sub-standard, court cases held in India about custody and place of residence: "Notably, almost all of these cases are a result of marital dispute in which one of the parents [has] got permission from courts in India to have custody of the children." Got permission? A kind of school-teacher's permission to leave class? Are the alternative court cases in the USA always cast-iron examples of justice, to which nobody can have objections?

Heartbreaking as such custody disagreements between parents are, they are also difficult, and it is not, in the nature of things, possible to decide them to the equal satisfaction of both parents as well as the children. The Hague Convention will rarely help come to a balanced decision, quite the contrary.

*

The Hague Convention on international child abduction also has another dark side to it, even more detrimental to children, and mentioned by Dr. Chaudhary: It allows, even promotes, custody demands from others, namely from the impersonal child protection services (CPS) of a state. In On the Hague convention regarding international child abduction: Custody demands from other sources than parents I have given examples of how the CPS (Barnevernet) in Norway act internationally in order to obtain control over escaped children and isolate them from their entire family, and how the Hague Convention gives them greater power to do so.

Suranya Aiyar takes up some further implications: how the CPS ideology ties in with political trends and how the CPS make use of conflicts between parents to gain power for itself over children: The threat posed by global child-rights conventions, Sunday Guardian, 21 October 2017.

It's really bad business. So, are American CPS units and courts certain to be lily-white protectors of a child's relationship to both/all its loved ones – are they so much better than our notorious Barnevernet in Norway? Hardly.

Since senator Portman says almost all the cases are custody disputes, then what are the rest – are there CPS cases among them?

A concrete example of a procedure from New Jersey was described by Suranya Aiyar back in February 2013: Family must come first:
"The US questionnaire for evaluating relatives requesting custody of children removed from their parents is revealing of what their child protection system thinks relevant in such cases. The questionnaire asks for descriptions of the relative’s “physical appearance” and “salient personality traits”. It requires relatives to state their annual income and level of education. It asks whether household amenities include air-conditioning. There are fourteen pages of questions in this vein.
The worst thing about this inspection on the Sahas is not the type of questions asked but the fact that there has to be an investigation at all. It should be enough to decide the matter that these are Indrashish’s grandparents and they want him back."

*

Fundamentally, the CPS in most Western countries share an ideology, tragically implicit in their thinking about children's rights and best interest. It is visible in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, worked out under strong influence of people schooled in the same way of thinking. It holds a child to be an isolated individual whose best interest lies in the material quality of its environment and the advantages it can draw from it. The ideology is very narrow in its ideas of material or concrete advantages too. For example, I can imagine that if an American-Indian child is to live in America without its Indian parent, it is unlikely to obtain such an advantage as the mastery of another language, and may then lose all communication with Indian relatives if their language is not English. If the child grows up in India, English is, on the other hand, surely very easy to keep up, in addition to perhaps acquiring Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Punjabi or whatever for free. And multi-lingualism is an asset in itself.

The American senator and diplomat have their ideas about ideal custody of children and the USA being the perfect place. Norwegians are at least equally bigoted: Norway is the best place in the world, people are happier here than anywhere else, the advantages of growing up and living in Norway are considered to outweigh any "trivial" needs. The child protection agencies of Western countries interfere in family life, often tearing the family apart, and they interfere in various ways in disputes between parents also. They tend to take little account of the overriding importance of a child's deep, emotional bonds to its parents and family. Even having to part from its mates in kindergarten or at school, or not being able to "terminate" its relationship to them in a "proper" way, are "problems" portrayed by these declared child experts of the CPS as greater disasters than parting from its family would be.

That one of the two closest family bonds is sometimes broken because the parents split up and become enemies is certainly tragic for the child, but the hope that a formal procedure springing from the Hague Convention solves the problems, in the hands of officials bent on formal rights, is in vain. Don't go there! Once in, it is probably very difficult to get its negative sides out.

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Hjemmeside http://www.mhskanland.net

  

In the first entry in this thread I linked to the Norwegian government's explication about the Convention and its application in Norway.

The original Convention:
28: Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction
HCCH, 25 October 1980


It is clear, already from Article 3, that it is not solely concerned with custody disputes between parents (emphasis mine):

"The removal or the retention of a child is to be considered wrongful where -

a) it is in breach of rights of custody attributed to a person, an institution or any other body, either jointly or alone, under the law of the State in which the child was habitually resident immediately before the removal or retention; and
b) at the time of removal or retention those rights were actually exercised, either jointly or alone, or would have been so exercised but for the removal or retention.

The rights of custody mentioned in sub-paragraph a) above, may arise in particular by operation of law or by reason of a judicial or administrative decision, or by reason of an agreement having legal effect under the law of that State."
  
  

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