In order to prevent children from being forcibly taken to another country by a parent in an international marriage, Japan should sign an accord to provide a legal framework for settling international child custody cases, a U.S. State Department official said Thursday in Tokyo.
Mary Ryan, assistant secretary for consular affairs at the State Department, said 55 countries have become signatories to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Japan is the only country in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations that has not signed it.
Of the 75 countries that have not signed the convention, there have been 33 alleged cases of such child abductions involving Japan -- the second-largest after the Philippines, Ryan said at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.