(7) Such low return rates encourage parents to 
abduct their children rather than to abide by the 
laws of the United States. 
(8) The United States is a party to the 1980 
Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Inter-
national Child Abduction (‘‘Hague Abduction Con-
vention’’), which provides a framework for the 
prompt resolutions of international abductions be-
tween the United States and the 76 other countries 
with which the United States has reciprocal obliga-
tions. 
(9) The Hague Abduction Convention does not 
have an enforcement mechanism and countries regu-
larly 
ignore 
their 
legal 
duty—without 
con-
sequences—to return abducted children whose habit-
ual residence is the United States. 
(10) In the 2017 Annual Report on Inter-
national Parental Child Abduction published by the 
Department of State, nine countries were identified 
as demonstrating a ‘‘pattern of non-compliance’’ for 
failure to comply with legal obligations under the 
Hague Abduction Convention to resolve ongoing ab-
ductions, including Argentina, the Bahamas, Brazil, 
the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Pan-
ama, Peru, and Romania. 
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(11) The report also identified four countries 
without an established reciprocal relationship with 
the United States under the Hague Abduction Con-
vention as demonstrating a ‘‘pattern of non-compli-
ance’’ for failure to work with the United States to 
resolve abduction cases, including India, Jordan, 
Nicaragua, and Tunisia. 
(12) Eleven of the thirteen countries so identi-
fied for non-compliance, other than the Bahamas 
and Romania, are currently receiving trade benefits 
under the Generalized System of Preferences estab-
lished by the Trade Act of 1974. 
(13) In India, where more than 100 children 
are being held against the wishes of their American 
parent, only 10 came home in 2016, and 66 percent 
of United States requests for the return of abducted 
children from India have remained unresolved for 
more than 12 months. 
(14) After eight years of heroic legal efforts in 
the United States and India to bring home her twin 
sons, who were abducted to India in 2008, Bindu 
Philips saw her case closed by the State Department 
in 2016 without their return. 
(15) Brazil has been continuously cited for 
demonstrating a pattern of non-compliance since 
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2005, and has neither issued nor enforced a court 
order to return a single one of the long term cases 
there since the return of Sean Goldman to his Amer-
ican father in 2009, after international pressure and 
the stalling of Brazil’s renewed participation in the 
Generalized System of Preferences. 
(16) Thirteen cases of abducted American chil-
dren in Brazil have been pending from 2.5 years to 
10 years. 
(17) Dr. Christopher Brann has been reduced 
to seeing his young son Nico for only a few weeks 
of the year, and only in Brazil, since 2013, when 
Nico’s Brazilian-American mother abducted Nico to 
Brazil in violation of pre-existing court orders in 
Texas granting shared custody, in violation of the 
Hague Convention, and despite ten independent as-
sessments that he is an excellent father. 
(18) Devon Davenport has won each of the 24 
appeals in his case in Brazil for the return of his 
daughter, Nadia Lynn, since 2009, but Brazil still 
has not returned his daughter to him. 
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SEC. 3. ADDITIONAL LIMITATION ON BENEFICIARY DEVEL-
OPING COUNTRY DESIGNATION. 
Section 504(b)(2) of the Trade Act of 1974 (19 
U.S.C. 2462) is amended by inserting after subparagraph 
(H) the following: 
‘‘(I) Such country has engaged in a pat-
tern of noncompliance in cases of child abduc-
tion, as determined by the Secretary of State 
for purposes of the notification requirement 
under section 101(f) of the Sean and David 
Goldman International Child Abduction Preven-
tion and Return Act.’’. 
Æ 
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