PRESENTATION FOR THE MEETING OF THE SPECIAL COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL CHILD ABDUCTION (THE HAGUE, 19 JANUARY 1993) BY SABINE MANKE SPECIALIST OFFICER AT THE GENERAL SECRETARIAT OF THE ICPO-INTERPOL First of all, I would like to thank the Hague Conference on Private International Law for giving INTERPOL the opportunity to outline here at this meeting its work related to international parental child abductions. By way of introduction, I would like to illustrate with an example how the tasks of INTERPOL and the Hague Convention on International Parental Child Abduction are interwoven. Last summer, I received a telephone call from a private children's organisation in Canada. They had been informed by a private individual that one of his neighbours was apparently living with an abducted child. A check into the files of the General Secretariat revealed that the person had actually abducted the child in France the year before and was wanted in order to serve a prison term. The Canadian Authorities were informed accordingly and they subsequently sent a message to France asking for further instructions on that case. Following a judge's decision, however, the French authorities did not maintain the arrest warrant but they expressed their intention to profit from the location of the child and to strive for the return of the child under the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction. That example shows that the two organisations act in the same matter with different objectives, but also that there is an intersection when it comes to the location of the parent which also means in most cases locating the abducted child. For a better understanding of the International Police Cooperation it seems important to me to give you an overview of the tasks and the functioning of the ICPO-INTERPOL. According to its constitution, the aim of the ICPO-INTERPOL is to ensure and promote the widest possible mutual assistance between all criminal police authorities as well as to establish and develop all institutions likely to contribute effectively to the prevention and suppression of ordinary law crimes. Intervention in political, religious, racial and military matters is forbidden. The General Secretariat is the permanent administrative and technical organ of the ICPO-INTERPOL. It implements the decisions taken by the General Assembly and the Executive Committee, supervises and coordinates the fight against international criminality, centralises information on crime and criminals and maintains contact with national and international authorities. At the request of a member country The General Secretariat issues international notices for offenders or notices for missing persons. The officers working at The General Secretariat also prepare special circulars reporting any new or particularly interesting modus operandi. Further, The General Secretariat answers requests from member countries for information to assist in investigations into such offenses. Normally, this amounts to nothing more than a criminal record check on persons suspected to be involved in offenses on an international level or to have criminal records in other countries. The cooperation between the 169 member countries takes place on a bi- and multilateral level, following certain principles. The most important one is the respect for national sovereignty which means that cooperation in a particular case, either bilateral or multilateral, depends on the respective relationship of the countries concerned. Each member country appoints one police department to serve as the country's National Central Bureau (NCB) and to act as the focal point for international police cooperation. In this way, difficulties resulting from different languages, different legal systems or jurisdictions of the member countries are surmounted efficiently. The communication between member countries as well as with The General Secretariat is assisted through the telecommunication system which is installed at The General Secretariat. The Interpol General Secretariat has further installed a criminal information computer system to accelerate the retrieval of information to within seconds. Since 1990, the organisation has proceeded to further upgrade its capabilities through the installation of a computerized criminal index file at The General Secretariat which can be accessed directly by the National Central Bureau or any institution with a police mission. This computer has been operational since the the beginning of 1992 and is holding selected basis information. The system also incorporates a special data base for the transmission of images such as notices, photographs and fingerprints. The ICPO-INTERPOL discussed international child abduction for the first time in 1985, when the Netherlands delegation raised the subject at the General Assembly. The Dutch delegation emphasized in their statement the seriousness of the problem and suggested certain standardized procedures for the cooperation in such cases. The initiative, however, did not lead to any resolution. The subject was touched upon again at the 1st International Symposium on Offenses Against Children and Young Persons which was held in Lions in April 1992, but neither resulted in a resolution nor recommendation on the subject. The number of international child abductions, however, is on the increase. In 1992, the INTERPOL General Secretariat handled 90 cases of child abduction compared to the total number of 236 cases of child abduction in the records of The General Secretariat I would now like to explain a little more in detail how INTERPOL is dealing with cases of international child abduction. As set out before, the foremost tasks of the organisation are to prevent crime as well as to facilitate the search and the arrest of international offenders. To that end, INTERPOL has developed a system of international notices which are circulated to all member countries. They serve different purposes: a RED notice for the search of international offenders; a BLUE notice to locate or to identify a person; a BLACK notice to identify a dead body; a GREEN notice to warn of an international offender and a YELLOW notice for the search of a missing person. The notices contain a case summary, photograph and description of the person and the reason for the notice. Due to the various legislations in the member countries a standard procedure in child abduction cases has not yet been established. Nevertheless, most member countries tend to make use of the INTERPOL channels in the search for the abducting parent. The figures relating to the notices which have been issued for child abduction cases can substantiate this statement: At the request of member countries, The General Secretariat has issued a total of 26 notices for parental child abduction case. Twenty three (23) of them are RED (14) or BLUE (9) notices, aiming at the search and arrest or the search only for the abducting parent. The ramming four (4) notices were issued for the search of the abducted child. These requests reflect very well a certain standard which is followed by a country. Thus eight (8) out of the nine (9) BLUE notices were issued at the request of INTERPOL Washington, whereas Germany requested the highest number of RED notices (5). For the bulk of the cases, however, a notice has not been requested, rather the case information is circulated to member countries by means of telecommunication, which of course does not offer the possibility of including photographs or fingerprints. The highest number of cases (151) was reported by the European countries. North America followed with 64 reported cases out of which 60 were reported by the USA. The USA has, therefore, reported the most cases of any individual country. The remaining continents reported a much smaller number of child abduction cases; South America and Asia reported only a few more cases than the entire African continent. A charting of the situation in Europe shows that, of the European countries, the United Kingdom reported by far the most cases of child abduction to The General Secretariat. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, France and the Netherlands have reported a noteworthy number of cases. All other European countries have reported equal to or less than 5 cases. In order to avoid jumping to conclusions I would like to emphasize that the INTERPOL data base depends on the input from member countries. Member countries, however, do not systematically involve The General Secretariat in their correspondence. Consequently there is a number of bi- and multilateral communications which are not sent to the attention of The General Secretariat. It should be further stressed that some countries tend to include The General Secretariat's address in their correspondence and are therefore taking a more important place in the statistics than other countries which may have a comparable number of cases but prefer to keep their correspondence on a bilateral level. The previous explanations referred to the action of The General Secretariat and to the initiatives of those states which are searching for the parent and/or the abducted child. Therefore I should now like to draw your attention to the action of member states which receive a search request from another country. Police cooperation in the framework of the ICPO-INTERPOL respects the National Sovereignty of the member states. For this reason, each request from another country will normally be examined in the receiving country with a view to certain legal aspects such as the reciprocity of the offence, the existence of treaties for mutual assistance in law enforcement or extradition, etc. Once the legality of the request has been established the police authorities in the country concerned will take the appropriate action. I hope that my explanations will be useful for the work of the Special Commission and I would be happy to answer you questions. Thank you very much for your attention.