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The U.S. State Department has just issued its 2017
Annual Report on International Parental Child Abduction under the International
Child Abduction Prevention and Return Act (ICAPRA).
The individual country information and the statistics
within pertain to the 2016 calendar year.
The report identifies 13 countries as “Noncompliant
Countries,” as defined in ICAPRA. Nine
of these countries (Argentina, the Bahamas, Brazil, the Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Peru & Romania) are treaty partners with the
United States under the Hague Convention.
Four of the noncompliant countries (India, Jordan, Nicaragua &
Tunisia) are either not signatories to the Convention or are not treaty
partners with the United States.
In 2016, 230 abducted children whose habitual
residence was in the United States were returned to the United States.
The majority of these (170) returned from Convention
countries, while 60 returned from countries adhering to no child abduction
protocols, as defined in the Act. None
were returned from bilateral procedures countries or countries having other
procedures for resolving such abductions.
In 2016, the Department worked on 189 abduction cases
that were resolved without the abducted children returning to the United
States. These include cases that were
sent to foreign central authorities and later closed for one of the following
reasons: the judicial or administrative authority complied with the Hague
Abduction Convention; the parents reached a voluntary arrangement for the child
to remain; the left-behind parent withdrew the application for return; the
left-behind parent could not be located for more than one year; or the
left-behind parent or child passed away.
Of the 189 cases, 132 involved Convention countries,
and 56 involved non-Convention countries.
None involved bilateral procedures countries or countries having other
procedures for resolving abductions.
The individual country data pages each include (a) a
country summary; (b) a table containing data on cases open with the Office of
Children’s Issues in 2015 and 2016; (c) an evaluation of the central authority;
and (d) status reports on Department requests for governments to locate
children, rulings by foreign judicial authorities, actions taken to enforce
judicial orders, and Department recommendations.
The full report can be found here: https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/childabduction/complianceReports/2017%20ICAPRA%20Report%20-%20Final.pdf
