Research Diary Example 4

Post date: May 5, 2014 9:56:08 PM

I researched about backgrounds of Hague Convention, especially concerning pressures from foreign countries to Japan. First of all, because of globalization, the number of international marriage cases is increasing. In Japan, there were only 5,000 cases in 1970, but in 2005, more than 40,000 cases were international marriage in a year. At the same time, many international marriage couple ended in divorce. As a result, more and more child abduction become serious issues in the world and also in Japan. Actually, in 2010, the American Lower House criticized Japan’s position about child abduction concerning international marriage. According to the Lower House, 269 American children were taken away from America to Japan since 1994. The Lower House required Japan to let these children go back to America and allow them to meet parents in America. Moreover, at the point of 2013, as many as 90 countries ratify Hague Convention. Recently, Japan has been under pressures from many other countries. With these pressures, since 2011, the government started to discuss whether Japan should ratify this Convention or not. As I researched last week, the first purpose of Hague Convention is to protect children born in international marriage from abduction across borders between countries of parents. At the same time, Hague Convention is very important and useful for parents. It means that with the Convention, parents do not have to bring a return order to the other country’s court. Without the Convention, if parents want to bring a suit, they have to bring the order to foreign country’s court where their children are taken to. Now, Hague Convention is on the world trend.