Annual Report of the Office of the Head of International Family Justice for 2012

The Annual Report provides a real insight into the activities of the Office of the International Liaison Judge together with an evaluation of developments and a statistical analysis of the cases it has dealt with.

The central message is the continually growing need for international judicial liaison as global families increase and the undoubted benefits that this can bring in resolving litigation.

The statistics show that in 2012 there was a 40.5% rise in applications for assistance to 253. This reflects growing globalisation and the increase in applications under the 1980 Hague which increased by 100% in the decade to 2008.
 The requests for assistance involved 71 separate jurisdictions. This included liaison with Sudan. Of the 71 jurisdictions involved tangible assistance was given in 46. Given only 2 countries (England and Netherlands) have a permanent office as opposed to a judge alone this is very positive. 
50% of all the cases were intra-European, 14% the Americas and Carribean, 10% Africa, 15% Middle East and Asia and 6% Australia/NZ. Within the EU the largest number of applications was in respect of Poland (14) but as Poland has not appointed a sitting judge as the IHLJ or EJN judge (same for Italy) this has impeded liaison. France, Germany, Spain and Ireland also generated significant numbers of requests. Liaison with the USA has proved easy to facilitate as they are accustomed to inter-State liaison. Good links have been made with Kenya, Nigeria and with a number of South American countries.
The office has dealt with queries relating to public and private law children cases, relocation, inter-country adoptions, surrogacy, forced marriage and financial remedy cases as well as abductions.
Of the requests most were 'outgoing' where the English courts were seeking assistance from another jurisdiction. Only 11% were incoming requests from other countries seeking information about our systems.
Although only 28% of the requests were made directly by judges (56%) were made by practitioners all approaches have to have the sanction of the judge involved.
The Pakistan Protocol has been used in a nearly 200 cases since 2003, some to achieve returns many as a protective measure in temporary leave to remove 'holiday' cases. The Cairo Declaration has not borne the fruit that the Pakistan Protocol has.

Interesting examples of the assistance given include
(a) a request to the AG of Cyprus for assistance in ensuring a mother was not prosecuted on return where an EAW had been issued
(b) assistance in the transfer of care of an incapacitated adult from France to England.
(c) Liaison with the French authorities to secure the return of 2 children the subject of care proceedings in England.

The full report can be found at : http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Reports/international_family_justice_2013.pdf