This article addresses two contemporary challenges for the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention: (i) domestic violence and (ii) child participation. It also outlines three components of a global socio-legal policy and research initiative undertaken to address these issues and, where relevant, their intersection. The published literature on these topics, including the children's objections exception, is explored, as are the ways in which these challenges are addressed within some of the 101 Contracting States to the Convention and through the Guide to Good Practice on Article 13(1)(b) of the Convention. Regard is paid to the data provided by the statistical analysis of applications made under the Convention in 2015 by Lowe and Stephens, and the changes which will occur once the Recast of The European Brussels 11a Regulation comes into operation. The likely impact of the UK leaving the European Union, currently due to occur on 31 October 2019, for 1980 Hague Convention abduction proceedings is contemplated. Other current international initiatives are discussed, including the development of a child-friendly version of the Convention through The International Association of Child Law Researchers. Training is a key to changing attitudes and upskilling family justice professionals to ensure the Convention operates in a fully child-centric way. This will maintain and strengthen the Convention by keeping it 'fit for purpose'.

This is an interview with moving image artist, writer, and contemplative practitioner, Marilyn (M) Freeman by artist, Cat Auburn. They explore Freeman’s contemplative filmmaking practice, ‘Cinema Divina’ and the relationship of Freeman’s life, artistic practice and research interests to autotheory. Autotheory is widely held to be the coalescence of autobiography with theory (or philosophy) within a work of art or literature, often with an aim towards offering social or cultural narration and service. The impulse to collaborate on this interview came from Auburn’s encounter with Cinema Divina during an online group contemplative session facilitated by Freeman in February 2022. This interview covers Freeman’s development of Cinema Divina, such topics as Freeman’s theory of Vertical Dissonance, the risks of working autotheoretically, mysticism, interior life, the hierarchies of knowledge production and the potential for what Freeman calls ‘the illuminated space’ to create radical opportunities for personal transformation. Ultimately, this interview establishes that Cinema Divina can be seen as an autotheoretical practice that uses contemplative practices rooted in lectio divina, a meditative prayer ritual of early Benedictine monastics, to theorize through Freeman’s embodied, lived experiences and artistic outcomes.

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International child abduction involves one parent taking their child to a different country without the other parent's, or a court's, consent for that purpose, or not allowing the child to return home at the end of a trip away. This striking form of interparental conflict means the child may now be in a country with which they may have no, or only limited, familiarity. This may be experienced as a relatively benign event, or even offer the benefit of reconnection with wider family members and/or escape from an abusive left-behind parent. Mostly, though, the abduction of a child by a parent to an overseas destination has a profoundly distressing and enduring impact on the child's wellbeing and identity, and the nature and quality of their intrafamilial relationships.'International child abduction' was not, however, a recognised legal concept when this issue first properly emerged during the 1970s as a global phenomenon of immense social importance. 1 Then termed 'legal kidnapping' or 'childnapping', it faced the problem of being a topic that 'could not be defined, or even adequately identified'. 2 Nevertheless, there was recognition of its detrimental effects, including 'the risk of harm to the child and the certainty of distress to the parent from whom the child had been taken'. 3 Escalating international mobility, coupled with the growth in cross-border relationships and children born within them, and rising separation/divorce rates, further fuelled the need for action. Difficulty in securing the child's return from a foreign land also meant that, at an international level, the issue was beginning to capture the attention of lawyers, courts, governments and the public. Locating the abducted child and bringing an application for custody abroad was complicated, expensive, lengthy and exhausting, with no certainty of outcome due to the lack of satisfactory legal remedies and absence of mutual enforcement mechanisms between States. There was also concern that the courts, laws and values of the two countries involved were being unhelpfully pitted against one another. 4 Similarly, complex inter-State issues could arise domestically when, for example, a child's abduction involved two jurisdictions within a large country like the United States (US).There had been recognition of the need for an international approach to parental kidnapping since the end of World War Two, but it was during the 1970s that serious new initiatives 1