Background
This part of the course concerns the situation where a parent wrongfully takes his or her child to another country, or wrongfully retains the child in another country. It concerns only abduction by a parent, and not abduction by a third person. This chapter deals only with the civil aspects of cross-border child abduction, the quest for the return of the child and resolving the dispute about the parental responsibility for the child. It does not regard the criminal prosecution of the abducting parent (a matter which is regulated differently in different States).
For more information about the occurrence of international child abduction, see the statistical analysis that Professor Nigel Lowe made for the Hague Conference on Private International Law.