Parental abduction of British children on the rise

LONDON: A large number of British children are taken from UK by one of their parents to an overseas country, including India and Pakistan, and never returned, officials said on Thursday.



The number of children 'abducted' by parents and taken overseas rose by 39 per cent in 2009, the Child Abduction Department of Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said.

The department handled 146 cases of children taken to countries not covered by the 1980 Hague Convention on international child abduction, compared to 105 in 2008, the UK newspaper The Independent reported.

The countries, which have not ratified the convention include India, Pakistan, Thailand, Ghana and Nigeria.

The highest number of 'abductions' take place in the summer, when a parent takes a child on holiday to a country where they have relatives, and then refuses to bring them home, the FCO report said.

“If a parent wishes to take their child to live in a new country they will normally need either the permission of the other parent or the British courts,” Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne said. “International parental child abduction, whether intentional or not, can cause huge distress to families.”

Cases where British nationals return to the home country with their child following the breakdown of a relationship while the family is living abroad are also likely to be treated as abduction, he said.