Taking Flight – Domestic Violence and Child Abduction

Speaker: The Rt. Hon. The Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE (The Supreme Court)
Chair: The Rt. Hon. Dame Black DBE (Head of International Family Justice)
Admission: Free
Accreditation: This event is accredited with 1 CPD hour with the SRA and BSB
Series: Current Legal Problems 2016-17

About the lecture

Increasing concerns that victims of domestic violence, who flee the country with their children, are effectively being forced, under the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, to return to face their abusers, led to calls for a Protocol to the Convention which would make special provision for such cases. Instead, however, the Hague Conference on Private International Law has established a Working Group with the aim of developing a Guide to Good Practice in relation to article 13(1)(b) of the Convention. This provides an exception to the automatic return of children to their country of habitual residence required by article 12, where there is a grave risk that their return would expose them to physical or psychological harm or otherwise place them in an intolerable situation.

The Working Group has not found this an easy task. It raises so many difficult questions of principle. Should concern for the victims of domestic violence ever override the concern for the welfare of children which the Convention aims to protect? When is a risk of harm to a parent also a risk of harm to a child? How is a court in the receiving country to resolve disputes about who did what to whom? How effective are protective measures in the home country? What can the receiving country do both to assist the home country and to provide protection in the meantime? How does the interface with the 1996 Hague Convention on the Protection of Children work? Is Europe a special case? And what about the human rights of the children and both of their parents? Perhaps above all, is there a risk that, in its anxiety to preserve the integrity of the 1980 Convention, the Working Group will lose sight of the reasons why it was set up?

About the speaker

Brenda Hale is the most senior woman judge in the United Kingdom. She became a High Court Judge in 1994, after a varied career teaching law at the University of Manchester and reforming the law as a member of the Law Commission. She was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 1999 and to the House of Lords in 2004. In 2009, the ‘Law Lords’ became the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, where she has been Deputy President since 2013. Her principal interests are in family, social welfare and equality law.

About Current Legal Problems

The Current Legal Problems annual lecture series was established over sixty years ago. The lectures are public, delivered on a weekly basis and chaired by members of the judiciary.

The Current Legal Problems (CLP) annual volume is published on behalf of UCL Laws by Oxford University Press, and features scholarly articles that offer a critical analysis of important current legal issues.

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