REMARKS OF MR ADAIR DYER TO BE OFFERED AT THE BRIEFING ON THE HAGUE INTERNATIONAL CHILD ABDUCTION CONVENTION AND THE INTERNATIONAL CHILD ABDUCTION REMEDIES ACT (P.L. 100-300), WASHINGTON, D.C., JANUARY 6-7, 1989 I BACKGROUND INFORMATION A. United States Participation in the Hague Conference on Private International Law Exactly one week ago marked the passage of 25 years since President Johnson signed the Congressional Joint Resolution authorizing United States Membership in the Hague Conference on Private International Law and in UNIDROIT, the Rome Institute on International Unification of Private Law. It is most appropriate therefore that this program is being held to discuss the most effective ways of utilizing the first international convention which the United States has ever ratified dealing directly with a problem of family law, the Hague Child Abduction Convention. I will not, of course, give you a history of the developments which led the United States to take the decision to join the Hague Conference 25 years ago, since that history is not within the scope of this meeting. I should only mention that the decisive preliminary step was taken at the 1963 mid-year meeting of the American Bar Association where a resolution was proposed and adopted by the House of Delegates urging that all necessary or appropriate action be taken to cause the United States to become a Member of the Hague Conference and the Rome Institute. (The full history is traced in Professor Kurt Nadelmann's article "The United States joins the Hague Conference on Private International Law", 30 Law and Contemporary Problems 291 [1965] reprinted in Conflict of Laws: International and Inter-State, Selected Essays by Kurt H. Nadelmann [1972] at p. 99.) B. Hague Conference Organization, Techniques and Procedures As the first American to be appointed to the Conference's Permanent Bureau, its permanent secretariat, I have now been based at The Hague for 15 years covering four plenary sessions, which occur normally every four years. It may be useful for me to give you a little background on the organization and procedure so that you will understand where the Hague Conventions are coming from. In comparison with some other intergovernmental organizations' procedures for preparing international treaties, the Hague Conference process has been described as being "highly structured". The four-year cycle may include a period for final selection of a topic to be dealt with, followed by intensive research in the subject area and the publication of a report. Sometimes this research report is accompanied by a questionnaire, as was the case with the report which I drew up in 1978 under the title "Report on International Child Abduction by one Parent ("Legal Kidnapping")". This report and questionnaire were issued in August of 1978 in mimeographed form to the Member Governments which were asked to respond to the questionnaire. The questionnaire, report and the replies to the questionnaire were published as the first documents in the volume on this Convention edited by the Permanent Bureau and issued by the Netherlands Government Printing Office in 1982 as Tome III of the "Actes et documents" of the Conference's Fourteenth Session, under the title "Child Abduction". That volume contains the entire legislative history of the Convention including reports of the discussions held at the Fourteenth Session in 1980, the final text and the explanatory report on that text drawn up by Professor Elisa Perez Vera of Spain. The Permanent Bureau of the Conference has four lawyers, all of whom, by statute, must be of different nationalities. When a topic is selected for the preparation of an international treaty the project is normally assigned to one lawyer who will carry it through from the beginning to the end, including the editing of the volume of legislative history. Each country is represented at the preparatory meetings and at the diplomatic conference by its own legal experts. As you will find implicit in what I have said, the principal technique used by the Hague Conference in pursuing its sole mission, "the progressive unification of the rules of private international law", is the preparation of multilateral treaties. We have identified six stages of this process as follows: 1 the selection stage (selection of the topic to be dealt with); 2 the research stage (report, questionnaire and replies); 3 the discussion stage (strictly speaking this is a meeting at which only discussions are held and no treaty techniques are developed; normally this is the first Special Commission meeting on the topic); 4 the drafting stage (this usually commences at the second Special Commission meeting, may be continued at a third Special Commission meeting and is normally concluded at a diplomatic session where a final text is adopted; necessarily the discussions continue throughout the drafting stage); 5 the consolidation stage (this includes the preparation by a Reporter, who is a delegate from one of the Member Countries of the Hague Conference of an explanatory report on the text, and the editing and publication of the volume of the Actes et Documents, incorporating all of the legislative history including this final explanatory report); 6 the monitoring stage (for treaties with operational features, such as the Hague Child Abduction Convention, monitoring of the way the Convention functions and nurturing of this child which the Conference has produced, is called for; this is done (1) by organizing Special Commission meetings to discuss the Convention's operation, as will be done for the Hague Child Abduction Convention in the fall of this year, (2) by disseminating practical information to improve communication among Central Authorities set up under the Conventions as has been done under the Child Abduction Convention by distributing copies of court cases decided under the Convention and, in some cases, (3) by preparing a practical handbook on the operation of the Convention, as has been done in connection with the Hague Conventions on Service of Process Abroad and Taking of Evidence Abroad). C. Procedure in the Preparation of the Hague Child Abduction Convention (1) Selection The work on the Hague Child Abduction Convention was begun by a suggestion made by the Canadian Government in January 1976 that the Conference deal with the problem of "legal kidnapping". Between January and October of that year when the Conference's Thirteenth Plenary Session was to be held, a short note was drawn up within the Permanent Bureau to assess the desirability of preparing an international treaty on this topic. The decision was made at the meeting of October 1976 to place this topic on the Conference's agenda for future work. This decision followed a discussion based on the "Note on Legal Kidnapping" drawn up by the Permanent Bureau (published in the Actes et documents of the Thirteenth Session, Tome I at p. 121). Within the Permanent Bureau the task of doing the necessary research for the preparation of a "Convention on legal kidnapping" was assigned to me in the spring of 1977; already, however, a discrepancy in terminology had been noted since the description of the topic in French, the Conference's other official language as adopted by the Thirteenth Session, would translate literally as "a convention on the illegal removal of children abroad". (2) Research The preparation of the report and questionnaire on this topic involved not only extensive research in legal materials but a field trip to Geneva to the headquarters of International Social Service, a non-governmental organization with branches dealing with international family law questions in many countries around the world, to study the phenomenon from a sociological point of view. Although I am not a sociologist or social worker myself, I greatly benefited from these discussions in trying to frame the way in which the phenomenon would be described for the purposes of the Hague Conference's discussions. Incidentally, co-operation between International Social Service and the Hague Conference's Permanent Bureau has an extensive history itself going back to the preparation of a Convention on the powers of authorities and the law applicable in respect of the protection of minors in 1960, and including work done on a treaty on adoption which was drafted in 1964. In a limited sense the collaboration with International Social Service came back full circle. In 1960 already International Social Service had pled for centralized organs to maintain contact between countries in connection with the application of the Convention on Child Protection, a plea which was not followed in 1960 but which is fully reflected in the Hague Child Abduction Convention by the creation of Central Authorities in each country to receive and, where appropriate, forward applications for the return of children or for arrangement of visitation rights. At least two major features of my report and questionnaire issued in 1978 reflected the results of my discussions with field personnel of International Social Service. First I decided not to try to define "legal kidnapping", or whatever other term we might end up with, but rather to describe various manifestations of the phenomenon which tended to have the same functional result. The discussions had shown that perhaps 50% of the cases occur when there is no custody order, either temporary or permanent, outstanding. Thus, reference to violation of a custody order obviously was not sufficiently broad to cover the problem. In fact, limiting the Convention to cases where there was a custody order outstanding might only have led parents to act even more precipitantly in carrying their children abroad in order to avoid the effects of the Convention. Thus, a case of joint custody by operation of law at the place where the family is living is covered by the Convention when one parent runs abroad with a child or children. You may ask yourself how the problem of proof is met in order to obtain rapid return of the child. The answer lies in the Central Authorities created under the Convention which, in Article 7 sets out among others a responsibility for Central Authorities "to provide information of a general character as to the law of their State in connection with the application of the Convention" in the context of their general obligation to co-operate with other Central Authorities with a view to secure the prompt return of abducted children, and, in Article 15 allows authorities of the requested State to ask the applicant to obtain an order from the place of habitual residence of the child showing that the removal or retention of the child was wrongful within the meaning of Article 3 of the Convention and gives Central Authorities an obligation to assist applicants in obtaining such an order. The second feature of the report and questionnaire which were very strongly marked by the discussions with International Social Service was the emphasis upon obtaining sociological information. I had already noted personally while preparing a report on the conflict of laws of marriage in 1974 a dearth of sociological information to help indicate the type of convention which was needed. At the time when I had entered into that project, there was no longer any time to generate such information but the fact of having a relatively early assignment to the child abduction project opened this possibility and the discussions with International Social Service field personnel showed that sociological information and statistics were sadly lacking. This was partly due to the fact that the phenomenon itself, as I have indicated, is elusive because it consists of actions taken by parents in a number of differing factual situations which largely have the same functional result. Also, the statistical information and studies on international family problems, it seems to me, are still in a very early stage as compared with some of the national information available. One of the important features of the work done by the Hague Conference in the area of child abduction has been to stimulate at the national level the development of statistics concerning the phenomenon of child abduction, both into and out of the country in question. The replies to the questionnaire sent out to Member States of the Hague Conference showed the dearth of such statistical information in this field. Further action by International Social Service, which sent out its own questionnaire to the branches in various countries, helped to develop an embryonic set of statistics and pattern situations while a number of national administrations, stimulated by the questionnaire, began to develop their own statistics. I can add that recently the Council of Europe, which prepared a convention that is partly parallel to the Hague Child Abduction Convention but is centered on the traditional idea of recognition and enforcement of decisions in custody matters, has set up a format for reporting in-bound and out-bound child abductions and retentions. It is quite possible that similar statistics on the Hague Convention will result from the meeting which is to be held in the fall of this year at The Hague. I should perhaps mention a third area where discussions with International Social Service strongly influenced my report and questionnaire of 1978, and yet where the results remain puzzling. The conversations showed that there were various motivations of the abductor in child abduction situations and that field service personnel could not always clearly distinguish these motivations - consisting of mixtures of love, hate, fear, jealousy and deprivation, among others. Sometimes even, the abduction was intended to pull back together a broken or deteriorating family. The responses to the questionnaire as to motivation were mixed and inconclusive. Suspicious indications, however, centered around visitation, where a cut off or severe restriction of access to a child stimulated emotions of frustration, deprivation and pride leading to an abduction which in turn cut off access by the custodial parent. On the other hand, the abrupt removal of a child abroad by the custodial parent or at a time when both parents were exercising joint custody, might be stimulated in part by desire to cut off all access to the child on the part of the parent left behind. Moreover, visitation itself was attended by the fear that the child would be retained abroad. While the indications were mixed, this led to substantial emphasis on the problem of visitation in the questionnaire and report and this emphasis, as you probably know, remained and is heavily incorporated into the text of the Child Abduction Convention. We will come back to the visitation question under the more substantive part of this program. (3) Discussion Aside from the general research done in legal materials and the sociological input of International Social Service field personnel, I should mention several other early and important inputs into the Hague Conference work on this Convention. One came from Switzerland where as early as September 1976 the Swiss Delegation in the Council of Europe's custody Committee had made a formal proposal for what can be called in English "restoration of custody" (in French le retablissement de la garde). The idea was that in child abduction cases the return of the child to the place of habitual residence should be extremely rapid and if possible should be carried out by administrative procedures without resorting to more time-consuming judicial procedures. This proposal, laying the emphasis upon immediate restoration of the previous status quo, gave major importance to the child's sense of time since children, if left for too long in a new factual situation, will undergo a major uprooting for a second time when they are returned. Speed therefore is of the essence if child abductions are to be deterred and if the child's sense of continuity with his or her place of residence is to be maintained. The initial discussions of the Special Commission showed that the Convention should be oriented on the Swiss approach, rather than on traditional procedures for recognition and enforcement of judgments or direct rules governing jurisdiction in custody cases. As an illustration of this approach, I can mention a case which occurred in the spring of I987, several months after the Hague Child Abduction Convention entered into force for Australia, Switzerland already having been a Member for three years. A child was taken from Australia by the father on a flight to Zurich, in transit to a country in the Mediterranean region which was not a Party to the Convention. A telephone call to the Australian Ambassador in Berne led him to call the Swiss Central Authority at home, at 3 or 4 o'clock on a Sunday morning. While the Central Authority's spouse was understandably annoyed at the call, the Central Authority once wide awake called Zurich airport where the police stopped the father and the child in transit. The father, realizing that the game was up, consented to allow the child to be returned on the next plane to Australia. This is the fastest case of return which I yet know of under the Hague Convention. This may be a point at which I should step ahead and say something about the way in which the Conference's Permanent Bureau has encouraged rapidity of action under the Convention since it entered into force. In some countries there is a tradition of a faceless and nameless bureaucracy where the individual carrying out governmental tasks remains essentially anonymous. Article 6 of the Hague Convention requires each Contracting State to designate a Central Authority "to discharge the duties which are imposed by the Convention upon such authorities". In most cases the designation will be made in general terms and the Central Authority will simply be described as the "Ministry of Justice" or, for example, the"Ministry of Foreign Affairs". Early on, the Conference's Permanent Bureau, encouraged by those countries which had become Parties to the Convention, undertook to collect and disseminate more specific practical information concerning the Central Authorities such as the telephone number, telex number, names of contact persons, the languages spoken and, more recently, telefax numbers. It is thanks to the dissemination of such information that in a case like the Australian/Swiss case the Australian authorities would have the name of the contact person and could, even in the middle of the night and on the weekend, look up that person's home telephone number. Speed of action had been stressed in the very first Special Commission's conclusions (Actes et documents, 14th Session, Tome III, pp. 162-165, No. 21). (4) Drafting The least faceless bureaucrat whom I have ever known was Louis Chatin who, I am sad to say, passed away this last summer. He participated as a French representative from the very first through the end and into the implementation stage of the Hague Convention and was a never-ending source of ideas, information and enthusiasm. As Head of the Bureau of International Co-operation of the Ministry of Justice in Paris, he was already, at the beginning of the work on the Child Abduction Convention, serving as the Central Authority under the Hague Conventions on Service of Process Abroad and on Taking of Evidence Abroad. The limitations of the scope of co-operative effort under those Conventions inspired him to promote a very broad range of mutual co-operation under the Hague Child Abduction Convention as evidenced in the text of Article 7 which will be examined more closely later today. Moreover, he saw visitation on the part of the non-custodial parent as a "necessary corollary" of custody rights (this principle had been included in the First Special Commission's conclusions), and his influence is largely responsible for the pervasive presence of references to access (the British term) throughout the Convention's text. He also saw very clearly the financial difficulties of parents who were left behind after a child abduction or retention and insisted on the provisions of Article 26 providing full legal aid and assistance, subject to a reservation which was necessary, in particular for the needs of such federal countries as Canada and the United States which do not have comprehensive legal aid systems. I should not leave the specific subject of drafting without mentioning the capital contribution made by Canada, the country which had first suggested this subject in January 1976. The Canadian government's people working in the field of private international law "put their money where their mouth is". After the conference decided to pursue the topic, the Canadian Department of Justice supplied the Permanent Bureau with a copy of a brief which it had prepared entitled "International Abduction of Children by a Parent", Aside from giving me information which was invaluable for my research, it provided the essence of the title for my report "Report on International Child Abduction by One Parent" to which was added, within parentheses for identification, the original term "legal kidnapping" which had been abandoned as an overly emotive oxymoron, untranslatable into French. Parenthetically I should say here that throughout the drafting, consideration had to be taken of whether any proposed term could be translated from English into French or, vice versa, from French into English, since the Conference's Drafting Committees work in both languages simultaneously. At the meetings on the Child Abduction Convention, Canada contributed a highly experienced international legal expert, H. Allan Leal, formerly Dean of Osgoode Law School in Toronto, and formerly President of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada, formerly Head of the Law Reform Commission and then Deputy Attorney General of the Province of Ontario. Dean Leal served as Vice Chairman of the Special Commissions and of the Commission at the Plenary Session, in back-up to the Chairman, A.E. "Sandy" Anton, of Scotland, but Dean Leal's most lasting contribution was his service as ex-officio Chairman of the Drafting Committee. Canada, being a bi-lingual country, also made enormous contributions to the preparation of meaningful equivalent texts in both languages. Michel Hetu from the legal services of the Government of Quebec and Michelline Langlois, representative of the Department of Justice in Ottawa and French-speaking arm of Dean Leal on the Drafting Committee, made very significant contributions. Although the Chairman of a Special Commission or Commission at The Hague normally remains apart from the drafting, Sandy Anton, then a member of the Scottish Law Commission and now Professor at the University of Aberdeen, had participated in work at The Hague since 1964, including distinguished service on Drafting Committees. His suggestions made a rich contribution to the final text. (5) Consolidation Last, but certainly not least in this list of early influences on the Convention, I wish to mention our dear regretted friend, Brigitte Bodenheimer, who participated actively and decisively in the two preparatory Special Commission meetings and was only prevented from attending the Plenary Session, at which the final text was adopted, by the sudden illness which struck her in the fall of 1980. Her work as Reporter of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act had sensitized her to the whole range of child abduction problems and familiarized her with the limitations of each possible remedy. This breadth of knowledge of the practical problems and solutions, as well as the depth of her knowledge of comparative law, had a pervasive influence on the text of the preliminary draft and the whole spirit of the proceedings. We miss Brigitte greatly but Larry Stotter, who had already participated in the Special Commission work, and Pat Hoff, who joined in the work of the Plenary Session in the final negotiations and drafting (from her position as congressional advisor to the U;S. Senate), have carried on most impressively. first in obtaining the essential approval of the American Bar Association in record time and, secondly, in drafting the implementing legislation for the United States - which I consider to be excellent - and steering it through the shoals of the congressional process. As you already know, Brigitte's adopted home State of California has been extremely well represented in this process as well by Gloria De Hart, whom I can only describe as the Ambassador of California and the other 49 States to the rest of the world, on family law matters. At the federal level Peter Pfund has played an absolutely fundamental role in guiding and organizing the process of United States representation in the preparation of the Convention, its ratification and its implementation. His co-ordinating role for private international law matters at the State Department, where some 10 years ago this responsibility was for the first time separated from responsibilities in the field of public international law, has been basic to this first federal treaty obligation in the field of family law. The skill and persistence with which he has tilled the soil in this field, which tends to be obscure from the political point of view, is testified to by the fact that the United States Senate in October 1986 gave its advice and consent to the ratification of four international Conventions in the field of private international law, including the Hague Child Abduction Convention. United States participation in the international unification of private law is now regularly reviewed by Peter in an annual report which is published in the ABA Section of International Law and Practice Quarterly, "The International Lawyer". Peter richly deserved that Section's annual Leonard J. Theberge prize for 1986/87 which is given by the Section each year to individuals who have made outstanding contributions in the field of private international law. The credits which I have given to such a wide variety of experts coming from different countries will perhaps show you how broad and diverse the input is which is not based on a "canned" version drawn up by the secretariat, or even on a draft drawn up in one language. The text is prepared simultaneously in the two working languages and is drawn directly from the discussions of the Special Commissions and Commission. Our procedure is to elect a Reporter, normally one of those experts who attends the first Special Commission meeting, who is charged with preparing the Special Commission's report to accompany the preliminary draft which will be submitted to the Plenary Session, and following the Plenary Session to prepare an explanatory report which serves as an official but not binding commentary on the final text. At the first Special Commission meeting of March I979, Professor Elisa Perez Vera, then Professor of International Law at the Autonomous University of Madrid, and now Rectora of the Universidad Nacional a Distancia, was elected Reporter. In this case her services began even before the second Special Commission meeting at which a draft was to be drawn up. Several delegates, including Brigitte Bodenheimer, had expressed concern as to whether the second Special Commission meeting to be held in November 1979 could complete its work of drawing up a preliminary draft unless it had before it, at the start, at least an outline draft. The outline was presented by the Permanent Bureau with the approval of the Chairman, Mr Anton, and the Reporter, Professor Perez Vera. The report of the Special Commission drawn up by the Reporter was of an ongoing nature since the text was still subject to change at the diplomatic conference. This report is published in Tome III of the Actes et documents of the Fourteenth Session at p. 172; it was drawn up in French and translated into English. The Explanatory Report on the final text is of a somewhat different nature and is intended to stand on its own as an official commentary on the text. Nonetheless it does not bind, but is simply intended to guide, lawyers and judges in the different countries in the application of the Convention's provisions. This report is the consolidation and the synthesis of all of the Convention's legislative history and should always be consulted when a problem of interpretation or practical application of the Convention arises. The Explanatory Report appears in Tome III of the Actes et documents of the Fourteenth Session at p. 426 and a table of contents of the report appears as pp. 474-476; the report, after a short introduction, is broken down into a first part on the "general characteristics of the Convention" and a second part consisting of a "commentary on the specific articles of the Convention". The consolidation of the Convention's legislative history is completed by a cross-reference table set out on pp. 478-479 of the Tome. This table permits a researcher to track back through the legislative history of each article of the final text adopted, in previous drafts, in the minutes of the discussions at the Fourteenth Session and in the Explanatory Report. If a lawyer is wrestling with a problem of interpretation of one specific provision of the Convention, the process of going back through the cross-reference table and its references is indispensable. The process of consolidation has continued to go on at the national level both in official and unofficial publications. The legal analysis of the text drawn up under the auspices of the Department of State and published at 51 Federal Register 10494 (26 March 1986) will be the most important to American lawyers and judges. In Canada, Michel Hetu drew up an excellent bi-lingual report entitled in English "Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Concluded on October 25 1980", published in a mimeographed edition at Hull (Quebec) in 1981. "International Child Abduction - Report of the Quebec Representatives" was published in the proceedings of the 67th annual meeting of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada held at Halifax, Nova Scotia, August 1985 at p. 236. A selected bibliography of reports, articles, books and miscellaneous publications which are important for understanding the Hague Child Abduction Convention, is attached to this paper. The "consolidation" of the Hague Child Abduction Convention, in the sense of preparing and pulling together all of the materials which will be useful for its application and interpretation, is still going on. Only last year a book was published in Italy under the auspices of the University of Pavia and edited by Franco Mosconi and Dino Rinoldi under the title "La Sottrazione Internazionale di Minori da Parte di un Genitore. Studi e documenti sul kidnapping internazionale", Cedam, Padova 1988. This work, for those who have access to the Italian language, constitutes an extremely valuable collection of studies and documents on international kidnapping of children by a parent. In another sense the "consolidation" of a Convention consists of the countries which become Parties to it. Eleven countries are currently Parties, these being: Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Hungary, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Countries which have signed but not vet ratified are: Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands. But this does not tell the whole tale. Countries which, during the recent Sixteenth Plenary Session of the Conference in October of 1988, indicated that they were well advanced in their ratification process are: Finland, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden, while Israel, several Latin American countries and certain additional countries of Eastern Europe have expressed definite interest in ratifying. The continuing expansion of this network is extremely important, as its efficacy will depend on denying, as far as possible, convenient places of refuge to child abductors. Islamic countries have so far shown no interest in joining a multilateral treaty in this field. Several North African countries have entered into bilateral accords with France, but it remains to be seen whether these accords will have any effect. The escape clauses in the Franco-Tunisian agreement, for example, incorporate an "ordre public" exception which was intentionally omitted from the Hague Child Abduction Convention. The Franco-Algerian accord of this past summer is too recent to give any clear indications of its efficacy. In East Asia, China and Japan are Members of the Hague Conference. Some expressions of interest have come from Hong Kong and Singapore. The apparently imminent adoption by the United Nations next year of the Convention on Children's Rights, the draft of which contains an article (6 ter) which encourages countries to ratify treaties on international child abduction, may stimulate interest in the Hague Convention, which is open to aceession by any State, on a broader, worldwide basis. Possible work on this subject within the Organization of American States, scheduled for CIDIP-IV to be held in Montevideo later this year, may encourage Latin American countries to join the Hague network. Such action was urged by the Inter-American Bar Association already at its Conference in Acapulco in November of 1985. (6) Monitoring The newest function which the Hague Conference on private international law has taken up is the persistent monitoring of the operation of those Hague Conventions which involve international judicial or administrative so-operation. The first example of this was in 1977 when, eight years after the entry into force of the Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extra-Judicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters, a Special Commission meeting was held at The Hague on the initiative of the Permanent Bureau to review the convention's operation. A similar meeting was held the following year to review the operation of the Hague Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters. Both of these Conventions are characterized by the fact that they involve the designation of a Central Authority by each State Party to carry out its obligations under the Treaty. The responsibilities of the Central Authorities designated under those Conventions are not as pervasive as those of the Central Authorities designated under the Hague Child Abduction Convention however, since these latter agencies have not only the responsibility to receive and execute requests coming from abroad, but also to forward requests abroad and more generally to engage in CO-operative activities and dialogue with other Central Authorities concerning abduction cases or visitation arrangements. For this reason I have referred to the authorities created under the Child Abduction Convention as "two way" Central Authorities. Earlier I mentioned that one of the functions which the Permanent Bureau was asked to perform by Member States of the Hague Child Abduction Convention was to collect and disseminate among the Central Authorities information facilitating their practical communication with each other. This effort has been undertaken and the Permanent Bureau's activities in this connection received high praise at the meeting recently held in Strasbourg to review the operation of the European Convention on Recognition and Enforcement of Decisions concerning Custody of Children and on Restoration of Custody of Children. Some matters discussed at that meeting such as the relationship between the Hague Convention and the European Convention in countries which are Members of the Council of Europe, do not directly affect courts or practitioners in the United States. I will return to some of the other issues brought up at that meeting later in this program, when I talk about practical cases which have occurred under the Hague Convention, since analogous situations have been posed under the European Convention. On an informal basis thus far the Permanent Bureau has also sought to collect case law under the Convention and selectively to disseminate copies of relevant court decisions to those Central Authorities or other lawyers who would seem to have particular interest in them. This informal process is reaching its limits and I hope that the meeting which will be held in the fall of this year to review the operation of the Hague Child Abduction Convention will result in more systematic arrangements for collection and dissemination of the case law. One of my objectives at this seminar is to find out from you, who are in the field, whether it would be useful for the Permanent Bureau to edit a practical handbook on the operation of the Hague Child Abduction Convention as has been done for the Hague Service and Evidence Conventions and if so, what content and format would be most appropriate. For example, should case law be digested or should court decisions be reproduced in full? Would the effort be justified to organize a current case service through which untranslated copies of court opinions would be forwarded immediately to subscribers? The answer to these questions can only be given by you who are in the practice. The development of the monitoring function has involved some change in the focus of the Permanent Bureau's activities, corresponding to a decrease in the rhythm of production of new international treaties. The thinking here is that it is better to apply effort towards promoting the more effective application of existing treaties than it is to continue drafting numerous new treaties. At the time when the Hague Child Abduction Convention was drawn up, the norm of the Hague Conference's production was three new treaties during each four year cycle. The past eight years consisting of two cycles have only brought on the production of three treaties, thus showing a reduction in the rhythm by 50%. However, as the Hague Conventions more and more reach the courts, additional effort must be expended to assure that their application is judicious and that any operational problems are smoothed out. My appearance here at the invitation of the American Bar Association is a part of this monitoring function. I hope that what I have had to say this morning and what I will have to say about the practical cases under the Convention during the later part of this seminar will contribute to better understanding of the Convention's legal provisions, its mechanisms and its purposes.