(Image source from: istockphoto.com)
The top United States Congressman has alleged that about 100 American children have been abducted to India and seek "real action" from the Trump administration to bring them back to the country.
Parents told the stories of their children's abductions and detailed the steps they had taken in the hopes their children would be returned to them during a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing to examine international child abduction,
"We have 100 American children abducted to India, with almost no hope of return home without the United States choosing to take real action, such as lowering the number of visas available to Indian citizens until abducted American children are returned," Congressman Chris Smith said.
He said that the Trump administration can and must use current law more aggressively to bring American children home to their families.
Smith said the 'Goldman Act' empowers the Secretary of State with significant sanctions that must be utilized, including the authority to: withdraw, limit, or suspend the U.S. development, security, or economic support assistance; delay or cancel one or more bilateral working, official, or state visits; extradite the taking parent, which puts pressure on the parent to return the child; or to come up with their own action that would have positive effect.
The act was signed by former President Barack Obama on August 8, 2014. It chiefly seeks to facilitate the return of children from both the Hague Convention and non-Convention countries. India is not a signatory to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. No bilateral agreements are between the two countries.
Without the Hague Abduction Convention or any other protocols intended to resolve abduction cases, parents by and large must pursue custody of abducted children in Indian courts, where they are generally unsuccessful. While Japan was finally named "non-compliant" by the Trump administration in this year’s annual report, Japan is still not held accountable for the dozens of cases that were pending before it signed the Hague Convention in 2014, he said.
"I believe the Trump administration can and must do better with the backing of the Hague Convention, bilateral agreements, and requests for cooperation in return of abduction children with the actions described in the Goldman Act. Goldman Act actions were intended to get results - use the sanctions, Mr. President - because we can and must do better," Smith said.
Smith said the Hague Convention was intended to minimize trauma to children and left behind parents, returning children to their home country for custody determinations quickly - but it is regularly flouted without consequence to the violating country.
"Tragically, the State Department has persistently refused to use the return tools in the Goldman Act as envisioned by Congress to enforce the Hague Convention, and to move non-Hague countries to bilateral resolution agreements with the United States," he rued.
The Hague Convention is a multilateral treaty developed by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) that gives a prompt method to return a child internationally abducted by a parent from one member country to another.
While in the U.S. it is called abduction, most of such instances are a consequence of marital conflict wherein one of the parents stays with the child in India and quite frequently gets a court order in their favor.
The State Department in its travel advisory for India cautions the U.S. citizens for acting forcefully to get back their kids while in India. India is the number 1 non-Hague Abduction Convention signatory destination of child abduction from the U.S., and number 3 overall, according to a 2015 State Department report.
The State Department reported 104 cases of abduction in 2014 of the American children in India. This comprises 20 new cases and 84 from the former years. Each year, over 450 new children are abducted, adding to the 11,000 children who were abducted internationally amid 2008 and 2017, Smith said.
-Sowmya Sangam
