By Charlotte Richardson
Under the Hague Abduction Convention, a mother who flees domestic abuse abroad with her child can be labelled an international abductor.
The Convention was designed in 1980 to stop parents, predominantly fathers, from taking children across borders against a mother’s wishes. This law, intended to protect mothers and children, is now harming them. Signed by 103 countries, the default is often for the child to be returned, with or without the “taking parent”, with courts aiming to do so within six weeks.
Ruth Dineen, founder of Hague Mothers, explained that mothers are disproportionately targeted under the Convention. Around 75% of “taking parents” are mothers, and Hague Mothers estimates that at least 78% raise allegations of domestic abuse. Dineen believes this figure is an underestimation, since mothers are frequently advised not to raise abuse as a defence.
Hobson’s Choice
For many abused mothers, the choice is between remaining in danger or fleeing with their child. Once Convention proceedings begin, that narrows further: return to the abuse with her child, or let her child return to the abuser alone. Ruth calls this “Hobson’s choice”: no real choice at all. She says even a mother who fully understands the Convention is choosing between different harms, not between harm and safety. Some mothers may face arrest if they return with their child because international child abduction is a criminal offence in some countries, including the UK.
Many mothers’ visas are tied to the relationships they are fleeing, putting their right to remain, work, and access welfare at risk. Ruth tells the story of one mother who was raped while studying in the UK. She became pregnant, gave birth to her child, and returned to her home country. Her rapist brought a Hague case against her, and she was forced to return to the UK. She has lived on rolling visitor visas ever since, unable to work, and often going hungry.
In some circumstances, the choice is removed entirely. Ruth described how an Argentinian mother fled the United States, and her child was subsequently taken back to the US under the Convention, while she was refused re-entry. Other mothers Ruth has worked with have been prosecuted despite assurances they would not be, or murdered after returning. Yet most still go back. “Very few fathers who abduct come back,” Ruth says, “But the vast majority of mothers come back, in the face of all that horror and all that impossibility.”
The “Grave Risk” Exception
Under Article 13(1)(b), a child may not be returned to the country they were taken from if there is a “grave risk” that their return would expose them to physical or psychological harm or otherwise place them in an intolerable situation. This is the only exception on which mothers fleeing abuse are able to rely. However, Ruth explained that the exception was never intended to address domestic abuse and does not account for it – “it’s a misfit”.
The exception’s threshold varies across signatory states. Many recognise only physical violence as abuse, with no legal framework for coercive control or post-separation abuse, concepts English and Welsh courts are only beginning to recognise themselves. Ruth believes that courts rarely acknowledge that the legal process itself can be a tool for abuse. She finds that mothers face an incredibly high bar for proving the abuse harmed the child directly, not just themselves, and encounter persistent resistance to recognising that violence against a mother also harms her child.
The House of Commons Library noted that one of the Convention’s “biggest shortcomings” has been identified as “its failure to anticipate that many abductors would be victims of domestic violence fleeing their abuser”, a gap researchers say “can often lead to unfair and dangerous results.”
Victim Blaming
Similarly to Right to Equality’s research on victim blaming in English and Welsh courts, Ruth recognises victim blaming throughout every stage of this process. Courts routinely disbelieve mothers and minimise their accounts, she says, sometimes even when a parallel criminal case is underway against the abusive father. Assumptions persist that abuse victims exaggerate or act out of vengeance. This concerning logic extends to the language used within the Convention’s institutions: the HCCH’s Secretary General has described abduction itself as a form of child abuse, arguing that mothers must not benefit from having fled.
Ruth saw this play out in a case with a First Nations Australian mother. She had planned to leave her abusive partner for Australia when COVID-19 lockdowns hit, forcing her to remain with him in Europe. Once restrictions eased, she fled with her 7-month-old baby to Australia. Following Hague proceedings being brought against the mother, her daughter was taken from her despite still being breastfed. The child was given to a man she did not know, who spoke a language she did not understand. The judge justified ordering the child’s return partly because the mother “must not benefit from her illegal actions.” Having been denied permission to renew her visitor’s visa to return to the country where her child was taken, she is still fighting for access. The mother FaceTimes her child, who tells her her dad hits her – this form of punishment is legal in the country they are in.
Gender Neutrality in Legislation
Ruth labels the Convention’s gender-neutral language a “convenient fiction”. It was originally intended to return children to a primary-carer mother after being taken abroad by fathers wanting to “forum shop” or to punish them. Dineen finds “it’s really convenient to pretend it’s gender-neutral, as long as the Convention is treated as blind to gender, the HCCH and those implementing it are never required to examine their own biases, against women, against mothers, against migrants, against other cultures and religions.”
Ruth cites Brazil’s landmark 2025 Supreme Court ruling, requiring Hague cases to be assessed through a “gendered lens”, as an outlier. Most countries have yet to follow suit.
The Equality Impact Assessment published alongside the Crime and Policing Bill 2025 in England and Wales found men and women to be equally responsible for international child abduction. Hague Mothers disputes this assessment, citing HCCH’s own statistics and, in an open letter to Parliament, pointing out that the four parents sentenced in 2024-5 under section 1 of the UK’s Child Abduction Act 1984 were all mothers, and that since 2018, 33 mothers received prison sentences as opposed to 19 fathers. Baroness Sugg echoed these concerns during a 2025 debate: “We know that over 75% of Hague abductions are carried out by mothers, many of whom are victims of domestic abuse. It is therefore worrying that the EIA does not acknowledge the gendered impact of these cases and their clear links to domestic abuse”.
Many migrant mothers face compounded challenges: language barriers, unfamiliar legal systems, and isolation from family and support networks. Their immigration status is frequently tied to the very relationship they are fleeing, leaving them dependent on the abuser for their right to remain. Cultural, racial, and religious stereotypes shape how they are perceived on the stand, mirroring the prejudices faced by women in the English family and criminal courts.
Brazil’s ruling demonstrates that gender-neutral legislation often assumes a gender-equal world, despite the realities of gender-based violence. Such realities cannot simply be legislated around; they must be legislated for.
Centring Survivors and Trauma-Aware Advocacy
Hague Mothers believe that centring survivors is the only way to effect positive change. Ruth points to the South Africa Forum, where survivors spoke directly to Hague officials for the first time, as having moved the room in a way no professional testimony could: “there is nothing that anybody could have done that could have been more powerful,” she says. That conviction extends to how the organisation works day to day.
Ruth founded Hague Mothers after a chance encounter on Mumsnet with a mother facing these injustices. Hague Mothers now works with survivors, lawyers, domestic abuse professionals, and advocates, across dozens of countries, combining advocacy, training, and survivor-led testimony. Their work includes a booklet of mothers’ testimonies handed directly to the Hague’s Secretary General and attendees at the 2023 HCCH Special Commission meeting, and a survivor panel Ruth helped organise at a forum in South Africa. Despite the issues Ruth witnesses through Hague Mothers, she describes herself as “less naive, but absolutely optimistic” – sustained by the mothers themselves: “these mums are not going to give up, and if they’re not going to give up, then we won’t give up either.”
What Next?
Ruth’s recommendations range from immediate reforms to bigger structural change. She calls for legal aid for any parent alleging domestic abuse in Hague proceedings, alongside a mandatory gendered lens applied to every case, supported by meaningful judicial training. She also advocates for replacing the current fast-track approach with a fuller domestic-violence risk assessment before any return order is made. Such an assessment would need to recognise coercive control and post-separation abuse, considering the risk to both mother and child rather than treating violence against the mother as separate from harm to the child. This closely reflects the recommendations of Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, in her 2026 report, for a mandatory, child- and survivor-centred exception requiring courts to conduct a thorough domestic-violence risk assessment before ordering return.
Beyond this, Ruth argues that the Convention must recognise the ways in which the legal process itself can be weaponised. Litigation abuse and related “court-induced poverty” should be recognised as harms in their own right and courts should be required to consider power imbalances that include access to legal representation, financial resources, housing, immigration status and support networks. Finally, reform must centre survivors – not simply speak about them. Those who have lived through the Convention know its failures best, and their voices should be at the heart of changing it.
Published 8th September 2026.