Today marks an auspicious day in history.  It is the 40th anniversary of the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention.  This highly successful treaty serves to promptly return children to their habitual residence after they are wrongfully removed or retained in another treaty partner country.  

You can find the Hague Conference’s resource page for all things Child Abduction by clicking here.  For practitioners, pay special attention to a few resources on this website, including the Country Profiles (cheat sheets on the resources available in a country for the Child Abduction Convention), the Status Table (to see what countries have ratified, acceded, and what countries accepted accessions), and a link to INCADAT (the caselaw database on child abduction cases).  Be sure to explore the Guides to Good Practice, the Explanatory Report, and all the documents reviewed and discussed as part of the Special Commission meetings (held about every 5 years to discuss the treaty).  

Finally, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the Permanent Bureau staff of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, past and present.  They do extraordinary work maintaining these resources and organizing all of the projects and post-Convention work on a variety of very important treaties.