Families Across Borders | law, policy, news and views
International Judicial Conference on Family Relocation
Meeting in Washington D.C. last week, an international group of judges, Central Authority representatives and academics from 14 countries discussed approaches to cross-border family relocation and agreed to a set of principles known as the “Washington Declaration on International Family Relocation.” The meeting was sponsored by the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children and the Hague [...]
European Commission Proposes Choice of Law Rules for Cross-Border Divorces
The countries of the European Union have been divided for several years on whether to adopt a regulation governing choice of law matters for divorce and separation. The ”Rome III Regulation” proposed in 2006 did not obtain the required unanimous consent of EU member countries. As an alternative, ten EU countries have now indicated that they would like [...]
Supreme Court Takes New Gender/Citizenship Case
The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in a case challenging citizenship laws that treat the nonmarital children of US citizen mothers and fathers differently. The case, Flores-Villar v. United States, 536 F.3d 990 (9th Cir. 2009) (Supreme Court docket no. 09-5801) poses an equal protection issue similar to the one in Nguyen v. I.N.S., 533 U.S. 53 (2001). Nguyen concerned the nonmarital [...]
Navigating Child Policy in China
An interesting short update on changes to the “one-child” policy in China by Didi Kirsten Tatlow, published in the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times, available here.
Morocco Joins Child Abduction Convention
On March 9, Morocco deposited its instruments of accession to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The treaty will enter in force in Morocco on June 1, 2010, but its accession will have effect only with respect to other treaty countries that declare their acceptance of this accession. Information [...]
Economist: The War on Baby Girls
The Economist has a story this week discussing the dramatic imbalance between the numbers of baby girls and baby boys born in a number of countries, most notably China and northern India, where there are now more than 120 boys born for every 100 girls. According to the piece: “Other East Asian countries, including Taiwan and [...]
Caution re Adoption in Nepal
Recent reports from both the U.S. State Department and the Hague Conference on Private International Law have suggested that parents and adoption agencies should be extremely cautious about pursuing adoptions in Nepal, “due to grave concerns about the reliability of Nepal’s adoption system and the accuracy of the information in children’s official files.” See the [...]
