Video highlights abduction issues

The number of parental child abduction and custody cases has more than doubled over the last decade with almost two children being abducted abroad each day from the UK, according to new figures released by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and charity, Reunite.

The FCO has launched a hard-hitting film, Caught in the middle, to highlight the issues and encourage parents to think of the consequences before doing something that could do lasting damage to the children and families involved.

There is no typical ‘abducting parent’ – although abductions are more likely to take place where families have links to more than one country and, contrary to popular opinion, it is more likely to be the mother who abducts than the father (approximately 70% of abducting parents are mothers).

It is also much harder to return a child from a country that has not signed the 1980 Hague Convention, an international agreement between certain countries which aims to ensure the return of a child who has been abducted by a parent.

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