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Newsletter -February 2011

Family Law

Family Law On November 9-10, 2010, the Department of International Law organized the First Technical Meeting of the Network for Legal Cooperation in the Area of Family and Child Law (the Network). This meeting was convened by the Permanent Council of the OAS in response to the recommendations of the Ministers of Justice and other Attorneys General of the Americas meeting in the framework of REMJA-VIII.

The liberalization of trade, economic interdependence, and the technological advances in transportation and communications of the contemporary world necessarily mean a greater movement of people across the borders in the Hemisphere -- globalization of the economic sphere that brings about a necessary “globalization” of the family. While regulatory, procedural, and international cooperation frameworks are in place to govern the movement of goods and services across borders, however, there is no similar structure to meet the needs of modern class of “cross-border” families, in which, inter alia, persons of one nationality marry those of other nationalities, move from one country to another, have or adopt children of a nationality other than their own, pay or receive child support, visitation rights, etc., all of which are subject to the regulatory frameworks of different countries.

The purpose of the Network is to strengthen legal cooperation in the area of family and child law in response to these new realities; to accommodate the legal needs of families, and to protect the rights of children, especially in the areas of international adoption, child abduction, and child trafficking.

The First Technical Meeting of the Network succeeded in further building on the progress made in the pilot meetings organized by the Department in 2009 and 2010, and were attended by authorities of 21 countries: Argentina, Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Lucia, the United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela, as well as the Permanent Observer countries of France and Spain. Also participating were the Inter-American Children’s Institute (IIN), the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM), and the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH), which shared their opinions regarding joint collaboration in matters of family and child law, and pledged to identify synergies and common mechanisms of coordination with the Network for the purpose of sharing tools and resources and eliminate possible duplicating of efforts.

In keeping with the objectives of the Meeting, the Information and Technology Services Department conducted a training session on the practical uses of the Network’s secure communications system which allows the authorities designated by the member states to process requests for cross-border cooperation and share legal and sensitive information in a secure and confidential manner. Brazil offered to host a Second Technical Meeting to continue advancing in the work of the Network and present the results and recommendations thereof at REMJA-IX.

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