INTERNATIONAL CHILD ABDUCTION REMEDIES -- A CALL FOR HELP

The Director of the U.S. State Department's Citizens Consular Services has written the Virginia State Bar seeking our help in fulfilling the United States's obligations under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The U.S. signed this treaty in 1988 and that same year Congress passed PL 100-300, the International Child Abduction Remedies Act (ICARA). The Hague Convention holds out the best available chance of getting a snatched child returned from overseas, and by the same token it obligates our Federal Government to help foreign parents retrieve their children who are snatched and taken to any of the United States.

The second part is causing our country some trouble and embarrassment at present. The treaty itself requires governments to provide free legal services for the victimized parents when they invoke the legal processes of the participating country where the child has been taken and ask its courts to order their child returned under the country's treaty obligations. The United States "took a reservation" when it signed the Convention saying that it would not be obligated to provide free legal services the way other countries are.

Thus the United States fulfills its treaty obligations when it leaves victimized foreign-country parents on their own in invoking the treaty and the ICARA. However, the catch is that the kind of cooperation American parents will receive in a particular foreign country is becoming more and more dependent on what kind of cooperation and assistance parents from that country have received in trying to use our legal system. The U.S. Government has promised other Hague Convention members to do everything possible to obtain volunteer legal aid for the foreign parents who seek to enforce their rights here.

Thus far the State Department has been able to recruit in all of Virginia only four "attorneys willing to take Hague cases," who apparently have agreed to take these cases as a pro bono service. Urging that only more volunteerism will enable U.S. parents to retrieve abducted children promptly from abroad, the State Department is urging more Virginia lawyers to sign up. Those wishing to place their names on the volunteer lists should write Carmen A. DiPlacido, the Director of the Citizens Consular Service and Central Authority, at 2201 C Street, N.W., #4817, Washington, D.C. 20520-4818, or call Linda Donahue or James Schuler at (202) 647-2688.