| Several thousand children are the victims of | | | | country, and have family, friends or business there. The |
| international parental kidnapping each year. The | | | | destination country was in most of the cases the |
| majority of these children never return to the United | | | | country of origin of those foreign men and women |
| States. Post-divorce parental child stealing is not funny, | | | | married and divorced to American citizens. For the |
| it is a serious legal issue directly associated with | | | | abductor parent, taking the child "home" is the quickest, |
| parental custody and visitation disputes. | | | | easiest and less expensive way to "solve" a child |
| After a divorce, some parents feel a need to go | | | | custody and visitation battle. |
| home. Home could be another country thousand of | | | | In 1980, the United States, together with 50 other |
| miles away in which the law, culture, and language are | | | | countries, with the common interest of protecting |
| very different from ours. These are probably the | | | | children caught up in cross-frontier situations ratified the |
| reasons why locating and returning an internationally | | | | Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International |
| abducted, or wrongly removed and retained child, is | | | | Child. This international treaty seeks to protect children |
| especially complex and difficult. The parent who is left | | | | from the harmful effects of parental abduction and |
| behind when a child is abducted to another country | | | | retention across international boundaries, by providing a |
| encounters countless obstacles to find and recover his | | | | procedure to bring about their prompt return. The |
| or her child. | | | | countries that chose to become members of this |
| The study "Issues in Resolving Cases of International | | | | treaty are obligated to enforce custody and visitation |
| Child Abduction by Parents" conducted in 1998 by the | | | | orders from the courts of the other country members, |
| United States Department of Justice's Office of | | | | thus making the recovery more probable. In countries |
| Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) | | | | which are more difficult to be reached by airplane and |
| revealed that most kidnappers or abductor parents | | | | that are not members of the Hague Convention, the |
| have connections to the country to which they take | | | | location and final return of abducted children has |
| the child. These parents know the language of that | | | | proven to be very improbable. |