Hague Convention 1996

Hague Convention 1996
Hague Protection Convention

Convention of 19 October 1996 on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and Co-operation in respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures for the Protection of Children
Status of the convention   Signatories   Parties   Parties (not yet in force)
Signed	19 October 1996
Location	The Hague, The Netherlands
Effective	1 January 2002
Condition	Ratification by 3 states
Signatories	34
Parties	46 (ratifications/accessions)
Depositary	Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Netherlands)
Languages	English and French

The Hague Convention on parental responsibility and protection of children, or Hague Convention 1996, officially Convention of 19 October 1996 on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and Co-operation in respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures for the Protection of Children or Hague Convention 1996 is a convention of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH). It covers civil measures of protection concerning children, ranging from orders concerning parental responsibility and contact to public measures of protection or care, and from matters of representation to the protection of children's property. It is therefore much broader in scope than two earlier conventions of the HCCH on the subject.

The Convention has uniform rules determining which country's authorities are competent to take the measures of protection. The Convention determines which country's laws are to be applied, and it provides for the recognition and enforcement of measures taken in one Contracting State in all other Contracting States. The co-operation provisions of the Convention provide the basic framework for the exchange of information and for the necessary degree of collaboration between administrative authorities in the Contracting States.

The Convention entered into force 1 January 2002 and as of February 2017 has 46 contracting States. The United States and Argentina have signed the Convention, but have not ratified it.

The 1996 Convention aims to avoid orders about children's property and welfare (excluding parental responsibility and contact) being made in any state other than the state in which the child is habitually resident. It also allows orders made in the child's state of habitual residence to be registered and made enforceable in other Convention countries. It establishes a framework for the co-ordination of legal systems, and for international judicial and administrative co-operation.

The Hague Conference has, for more than a century, been involved in measures of protection under civil law of children at risk in cross-frontier situations. Three Hague Children's Conventions have been developed over the last twenty-five years, a fundamental purpose being to provide the practical machinery to enable States which share a common interest in protecting children to co-operate together to do so.

The 1996 Convention is the broadest in scope of those three, covering as it does a very wide range of civil measures of protection concerning children, ranging from public measures of protection or care to matters of representation to the protection of children's property. It also covers:

The subject of the Convention is one of the subjects treated in the EU's Brussels II regulations. Between member states this regulation takes precedence over the Hague Convention as it is "at least as favourable as the rules laid down in the Convention". The subjects of convention furthermore is an area of mixed competence between the European Union and its member states, which means that the European Union has to authorise it member states to sign and to ratify the Convention and state so. The European Union authorised signature and ratification in 2002 and 2008 respectively.