Obama urged to discuss abduction issue

[IndianaGreen]

Obama urged to discuss abduction issue

By Charlie Reed, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Wednesday, November 11, 2009

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — A group of U.S. senators has urged President Barack Obama to address parental child abduction with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama during his first trip to Japan, scheduled for later this week.

“This is a deeply important issue,” states the Nov. 5 letter the 22 lawmakers signed. “Many parents have not seen or heard from their children in years. We cannot sit back and wait while these children grow up without one parent.”

Japan is the only major industrialized nation that has not signed an international treaty on child abduction, despite continued international pressure. The 1981 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, to which 81 countries are signatories, safeguards custody rights for parents and prevents them from fleeing with their children to or within those countries.

There are a growing number of international child custody disputes in Japan, where family courts typically award custody to mothers and do not enforce visitation rights with criminal penalties.

The courts also do not recognize foreign custody orders, which some Japanese women estranged from non-Japanese spouses defy to bring their children back to their home country.

Beyond convincing Japan to sign the Hague convention, the senators also want the United States and Japan to develop a process to resolve the current open cases involving more than 100 Japanese-American children living in Japan and kept away from their American parents.

It’s a critical point, according to the letter, because the treaty is not retroactive and could not be used as a tool to resolve the existing cases in Japan.

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66000