Home is Where the Harm Is

LAST month Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, promised that he would soon sign an international agreement requiring the return of abducted children to their home countries. Japan is among the few industrial countries that has not joined The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, and Mr. Abe’s statement comes after pressure from the White House, the State Department and Congress.

Proponents of the convention, which the United States signed in 1981, characterize it as a means of reunifying families. And it can be. However, in practice, it often has a dark side: in many cases children and custodial mothers are being sent back to a dangerous or abusive father from whom they fled.    

Joan Meier, professor of clinical law and the director of the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project at the George Washington University Law School.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/opinion/when-abduction-is-liberation.html