The object of the Child Abduction Act [Chapter 5:05]

Leading scholars, Ton Liefaard & Julia Sloth-Nielsen, The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Taking Stock after 25 Years and Looking Ahead (Brill Nijhoff 1987) at 32 observed that:

One of the effects of globalisation is that it intensifies and multiplies issues and risks for families and children, including their mutual relations, as they move - increasingly and on a global scale - across international borders. Such issues and risks relate to, among others, custody of children, access, relocation, and parenting, all of which are matters that are aggravated when families and children migrate illegally to other countries, or are displaced due to civil war or natural disasters.

On the 01st June 1996, the Child Abduction Act [Chapter 5:05] (the Act) was enacted into law. In essence the Act seeks to provide mechanism for cross border children related matters. The Act gave effect within Zimbabwe to the Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction which was signed at The Hague on the 25th October 1980.

The object of the Act is to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to or retained in any Contracting State and to ensure that rights of custody and of access under the law of one Contracting State are effectively respected in the other Contracting States.