Japan will sign child abduction treaty
19 January AFP
Japan's foreign minister said Friday his country's new government
would sign a treaty on child abductions, addressing one of the few rifts
in relations with its main ally the United States.
Japan has not signed or ratified the 1980 Hague Convention, which
requires the return of wrongfully held children to the countries where
they usually live, but a previous left-leaning government had said it
planned to do so.Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, whose conservative
Liberal Democratic Party returned to power last month, said on a visit
to Washington that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government would take the
same stance.
“The government of Japan is intending to go through the necessary
procedures for early signing of the treaty,” Kishida told a news
conference with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton said she hoped that Japan's parliament would pass legislation
on the Hague treaty during its upcoming session.
Japanese foreign ministry spokesman Masaru Sato, asked about the time
frame urged by Clinton, said that the government was serious about
taking action.
“We will make our best efforts all we can so that early ratification
of the convention will be able to be achieved,” Sato told reporters in
Washington.
Japanese courts virtually never grant custody to foreign parents or
to fathers, leaving few legal avenues for fathers whose former partners
have fled to Japan with their children.
Hundreds of US parents have complained that they have no recourse to
see their half-Japanese children. At least 120 have filed cases in
Japan, invariably to no avail.
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