Japan to join Hague convention on child custody+

TOKYO, Aug. 14 Kyodo -
Japan has decided to become a party to a global treaty on child custody as
early as next year amid growing calls abroad for the country to join it to help
resolve custody problems resulting from failed international marriages,
government sources said Saturday.
The government will develop domestic laws in line with the Hague Convention on
the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which provides a procedure
for the prompt return of ''abducted'' children to their habitual country of
residence and protects parental access rights, the sources told Kyodo News.
Complaints have been growing over cases in which a Japanese parent, often a
mother, brings a child to Japan without the consent of the foreign parent, or
regardless of custody determination in other countries, and denies the other
parent access to the child.
Japan has come under pressure from the United States and European countries to
join the 1980 treaty aimed at preventing one of the parents in a failed
international marriage from taking their offspring across national borders
against an existing child custody arrangement.
The government has judged it necessary to resolve the issue as soon as
possible, given that leaving it unresolved for a long term would undermine
Japan's international standing, the sources said.
However, the government has yet to determine when to ratify the treaty, as it
is expected to take time to develop related domestic laws because of
differences in the legal systems of Japan and other signatory nations.
For example, on parental rights, Japan's law gives a single parent full custody
of children in a divorce, virtually allowing the custodial parent to take the
children away without the consent of the noncustodial parent, while the United
States and Europe allow joint custody.
Japan's Civil Code also does not mention visitation rights for noncustodial
parents and many Japanese parents awarded custody are known to refuse the other
parent access to the child.
Many civic groups active on the issue urge the Japanese government to amend the
Civil Code to allow joint custody but the government is set to forgo such an
amendment at this stage, according to the sources.
In January, ambassadors of the United States and seven other nations urged
Japan to sign the Hague convention in a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister
Katsuya Okada in Tokyo.
Amid growing global concerns over the so-called child abductions, the Japanese
government set up a division in the Foreign Ministry to specifically deal with
the issue in December last year, while then Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in
February suggested that he was considering Japan's accession to the treaty.
Japan and Russia are the only two countries among the Group of Eight
industrialized nations that are not a party to the Hague Convention.
==Kyodo
2010-08-14 23:34:20


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