Tag Archive for: children’s rights

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights: first judgment on international child abduction

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Guest post by Janaína Albuquerque, International Lawyer and Mediator

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) has just published their first ever judgment on an international child abduction case in Córdoba v. Paraguay, which concerns the illicit removal of a child who was habitually resident in Argentina. The applicant and left-behind parent, Mr. Arnaldo Javier Córdoba, claimed that Paraguay violated his human rights by failing to enforce the return order and ensuring the maintenance of contact with his son. At the time of the abduction, the child was about to reach 2 years of age and the taking parent relocated, without the father’s consent, to Paraguay.

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International child abduction: navigating between private international law and children’s rights law

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In the summer of 2023 Tine Van Hof defended her PhD on this topic at the University of Antwerp.  The thesis will be published by Hart Publishing in the Studies in Private International Law series (expected in 2025). She has provided this short summary of her research.

When a child is abducted by one of their parents, the courts dealing with a return application must consider several legal instruments. First, they must take into account private international law instruments, specifically, the Hague Child Abduction Convention (1980) and the Brussels IIb Regulation (2019/1111). Second, they have to take into account children’s rights law instruments, including mainly the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

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