The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction provides for a petitioner to seek return of a child that is being wrongfully withheld or was removed in violation of a parent’s custodial rights.

In countries that are signatories to the Hague Convention, there is still not complete compliance with a return request and estimates are that less than 60% of all petitions result in a return order. Some countries have higher compliance than others, and other countries are too new to the Convention to have a reliable return percentage.

For example, Singapore is a new signatory and there is simply not enough data, on the other hand Israel has been a signatory long enough to establish that a return order is highly unlikely.

Once a return order has been issued, there is still the issue of having the order enforced, and of those, only about 50% are implemented. It is dependent on the country and if they have the mechanisms in place under their local law enforcement to process and return an abducted child.