RECOVERY OF MAINTENANCE IN ASIA PACIFIC AND WORLDWIDE: NATIONAL AND REGIONAL SYSTEMS AND THE HAGUE 2007 CHILD SUPPORT CONVENTION AND PROTOCOL

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The Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH), through its Asia Pacific Regional Office, will hold a global conference on the recovery of child support and family maintenance in Hong Kong from 9 to 11 November 2015.

Please Save the Date. A conference program and further details will be circulated in due course. Note that the conference will begin at approximately 1:00 pm on Monday 9 November, and finish by 1:00 pm on Wednesday 11 November 2015.

The event is jointly sponsored by the HCCH and the Department of Justice of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, in collaboration with a number of other partners.

This international conference will provide an opportunity to discuss the dynamic development of family law and policy in the Asia Pacific region, and represents an excellent occasion for professionals working in this field from throughout the world to meet colleagues, make new contacts, expand networks and fill knowledge gaps. The meeting will allow for the further building of a global professional network in the child support / family maintenance field and for follow up on the 5-8 March 2013 Heidelberg Conference on the International Recovery of Maintenance in the EU and Worldwide. It will include exciting academic and hands-on workshops and lectures.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The conference organisers invite the submission of conference presentation proposals. Please send abstracts of 200-300 words, along with a short bio of no longer than 200 words, to Ms Alix Ng (HCCH Asia Pacific Regional Office) at before 15 June 2015. Limited funding is available for speakers requiring assistance to attend.

Legal practitioners, caseworkers, judges, enforcement officers, academics, and others engaged in the child support / family maintenance field are invited to submit proposals. The organisers in particular invite presentation proposals on the following themes:

• Current regional and national challenges or developments in Asia Pacific in relation to the recovery of child support and family maintenance, both domestically and in the cross-border context; evolutions in national policies on child support and family maintenance, and descriptions of recent legal reform in this field (or suggestions for such reform);
• The benefits of the Hague 2007 Child Support Convention and perspectives on its adoption and implementation in the Asia Pacific region and worldwide;
• Research and statistics in relation to demographic and sociological shifts (e.g. prevalence of single parent families) and migration patterns in the Asia Pacific region and globally bearing on the national and cross-border recovery of child support and family maintenance;
• Enforcement challenges and best practices in the field of child support and family maintenance;
• Perspectives on high functioning administrative systems for the recovery of child support and family maintenance (e.g., Australia, Norway, U.S.A.) and their potential in the Asia Pacific region;
• The roles of various ‘system actors’ and their potential for collaboration in the field of child support and family maintenance, e.g., caseworkers, judges, enforcement officers, private practitioners, etc.;
• Lessons learned from existing systems (e.g., Canada, EU, U.S.A.) for the cross-border recovery of child support and family maintenance;
• Data protection, privacy laws and duty of information policies with respect to income and assets of debtors in particular—developing best practices in the Asia Pacific region and globally;
• The use of information technology for the effective collection of child support and family maintenance at the national and international levels;
• The Hague 2007 Protocol on the Law Applicable to Maintenance Obligations;
• Economic and human rights dimensions (e.g., child poverty, UNCRC Art. 27, etc.) and issues of access to justice with respect to the national and cross-border recovery of child support and family maintenance;
• Other topics pertinent to the recovery of child support and family maintenance in the Asia Pacific region and worldwide.

For more information, please contact Ms Alix Ng (HCCH Asia Pacific Regional Office) at an@hcch.nl.