SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘International Child 
Abduction Prevention Act of 2009’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS; SENSE OF CONGRESS; PURPOSES. 
(a) FINDINGS.—Congress finds the following: 
(1) The Department of State’s Office of Chil-
dren’s Issues, which serves as the Central Authority 
for the United States for the operation of 1980 
Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Inter-
national Child Abduction, is currently handling ap-
proximately 1,900 open cases involving more than 
2,800 children abducted by a parent or legal guard-
ian from the United States to other countries. For 
a variety of reasons reflecting the legal and factual 
complexity of parental abduction cases and the sig-
nificant obstacles to recovery, only a percentage of 
all cases are reported to the Department of State. 
(2) In fiscal year 2008, the Central Authority 
for the United States responded to cases involving 
776 children abducted from the United States to 
countries with which the United States enjoys recip-
rocal obligations under the Hague Convention, but 
during that same time period only 248 children were 
returned from Hague Convention countries to the 
United States. Also in 2008, the United States Cen-
tral Authority reported 344 newly filed Hague Con-
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vention applications involving 484 children wrongly 
removed to or retained in the United States. Two 
hundred ten children were returned under the Con-
vention to their country of habitual residence. 
(3) The number of outgoing international child 
abductions reported to the Central Authority for the 
United States increased by about 60 percent in the 
last three years, and by about 40 percent in 2008 
alone. 
(4) In evaluating the obstacles to recovering 
children abducted from a parent in the United 
States, the first difficulty is presented by countries 
who are signatories to the Hague Convention, but 
have not acted in compliance with the responsibil-
ities of the Convention. According to the Central Au-
thority for the United States, Honduras has not 
acted in compliance with the terms it agreed to as 
a party to the Hague Convention, and Brazil, Chile, 
Greece, Mexico, Slovakia, Switzerland, and Ven-
ezuela have demonstrated patterns of noncompli-
ance. The failure of these countries to meet their ob-
ligations is found in the actions of their designated 
central authorities, the performance of their judi-
ciaries, as reflected in the legal process and decisions 
rendered to enforce or effectuate the Hague Conven-
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tion, or the ability and willingness of law enforce-
ment to insure the swift enforcement of orders ren-
dered pursuant to the Hague Convention. 
(5) The United States and other State Signato-
ries to the Hague Convention have expressed their 
desire, through the Convention, ‘‘to protect children 
internationally from the harmful effects of their 
wrongful removal or retention and to establish pro-
cedures to ensure their prompt return to the State 
of their habitual residence, as well as to secure pro-
tection for rights of access.’’. 
(6) In evaluating and assessing the problem of 
the abduction of children from the United States, 
the Central Authority for the United States in fiscal 
year 2008 reported that it had been provided notice 
of 306 cases of parental abductions involving 455 
children taken from the United States to countries 
with which the United States does not enjoy an 
agreement related to the treatment of parental ab-
duction cases and that are not signatories to the 
Hague Convention, currently including a cumulative 
total of 101 children in Japan, 67 children in India, 
and 37 children in Russia. The number of reported 
cases likely represents an even smaller percentage of 
the total number of United States children impacted 
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as the process for the location and recovery of ab-
ducted children differs significantly with each coun-
try, and there is currently no formal protocol for in-
tervening in such cases. 
(7) According to the Department of State’s 
April 2008 Report on Compliance with the Hague 
Convention on the Civil Aspects of International 
Child Abduction, ‘‘parental child abduction jeopard-
izes the child and has substantial long-term con-
sequences for both the child and the left-behind par-
ent.’’. 
(8) Abducted children are at risk of serious 
emotional and psychological problems and have been 
found to experience anxiety, eating problems, night-
mares, mood swings, sleep disturbances, aggressive 
behavior, resentment, guilt and fearfulness, and as 
adults may struggle with identity issues, their own 
personal relationships, and parenting. 
(9) Left behind parents may encounter substan-
tial psychological, emotional, and financial problems, 
and the majority have no means to generate the 
enormous financial resources required to pursue in-
dividual civil or criminal remedies to attempt to se-
cure the return of their children, even if such rem-
edies were available or effective in foreign courts or 
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political systems. Left-behind parents also often have 
to pursue child custody and other protective orders 
through expensive litigation at home. 
(b) SENSE OF CONGRESS.—It is the sense of Con-
gress that the United States should set a strong example 
for other Hague Convention countries in the timely loca-
tion and return of children wrongly removed from and re-
tained in the United States. 
(c) PURPOSES.—The purposes of this Act are to— 
(1) protect United States children from the 
harmful effects of international child abduction and 
to protect the right of children to exercise parental 
access with their parents in a safe and predictable 
way, wherever located; 
(2) provide parents, their advocates, and judges 
the information they need to enhance the resolution 
of family disputes through established legal proce-
dures, the tools for assessing the risk of wrongful re-
moval and retention of children, and the practical 
means for overcoming obstacles to recovering ab-
ducted children; 
(3) establish effective mechanisms to provide 
assistance to and aggressive advocacy on behalf of 
parents whose children have been abducted from the 
United States to a foreign country, from a foreign 
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‘‘(iv) in cases in which the child is liv-
ing outside the United States, such person 
is a United States citizen, has joint cus-
tody over the child, and is executing the 
application for issuance of a passport out-
side the United States.’’. 
SEC. 302. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS. 
There is authorized to be appropriated such sums as 
may be necessary for each of fiscal years 2010 through 
2013 to carry out this Act and the amendments made by 
this Act. 
Æ 
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