Posts
The U.S. State Department has now issued its 2023 Action
Report on International Child Abduction.
Ecuador has been declared by the State
Department to be noncompliant with the Hague Abduction Convention for each and
every year for the past eight years.
The State Department has reported to
Congress that within the past year it has taken the following actions in this
regard against Ecuador:
·
Department officials at the U.S. Embassy in
Quito continued to raise concerns with Government of Ecuador officials about
Ecuador’s demonstration of a pattern of noncompliance.
·
During the October 2022 U.S.-Ecuador Consular
and Migration Bilateral Meeting, Department officials called on the Government
of Ecuador to improve coordination between the Ecuadorian Central Authority,
police, and public defenders. The Government of Ecuador affirmed its
commitment
to an inter-institutional dialogue on IPCA.
·
In November 2022, Department officials provided
technical assistance to the National Court of Justice for an Ecuadorian
judicial seminar on best practices in the resolution of Convention cases. The
seminar included presentations by Ecuadorian Central Authority officials,
public defenders, and international Convention experts, including the
representative for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Hague Conference on
Private International Law (Hague Permanent Bureau) and a Canadian Hague Network
Judge.
·
In February 2023, Department officials
participated in the Government of Ecuador’s first inter-institutional IPCA
working group. The working group included technical experts from Ecuador’s
Central Authority, National Court of Justice, Judiciary Council, National Police,
Public Defender’s office, and the Hague Permanent Bureau.
·
Over the course of multiple meetings in February
and March 2023, the working group prepared a legislative reform proposal to
quicken IPCA response times.
·
In April 2023, the Minister of Women and Human
Rights and the President of the National Court of Justice presented the working
group’s legislative reform package to the President of Ecuador’s National
Assembly as part of efforts to reform Ecuador’s Children’s Code and presented
an administrative protocol to expedite IPCA cases.
·
Since June 2022, the U.S. Central Authority has
held quarterly video conferences with the Ecuadorian Central Authority,
National Police, and Public Defender’s Office to discuss pending IPCA cases and
strategies to improve Convention implementation in Ecuador.
·
In May 2023, the Office of the Spokesperson
released a media note to announce the release of the 2023 Annual Report on
International Child Abduction and listed Ecuador as a country cited for
demonstrating a pattern of noncompliance.
·
Also in May 2023, the U.S. Embassy in Quito
delivered a demarche to the Ministry of Women and Human Rights. The Department
noted that Ecuador has been cited for demonstrating a pattern of noncompliance
in the 2023 Annual Report.
·
Specifically, the judicial authorities failed to
regularly implement and comply with the provisions of the Convention, and
Ecuadorian authorities failed to take all appropriate measures to locate
children in a timely manner.
Jeremy D. Morley has provided
expert evidence to courts in several U.S. states on such matters concerning Ecuador.
