Zaštita dece u haškim konvencijama o međunarodnom privatnom pravu

Abstract

Since the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the principle of the best interest of the child has permeated all branches of law. Private International Law (PIL) is no exception. However, the application of this principle in PIL raises a number of specific issues, including among others the mechanism for providing child protection – the national codification of Private International Law or international conventions. Given the fact that effective legal protection in cross-border cases calls for cooperation between states, multilateral conventions appear to be a more appropriate method. In this context, the Hague Conference on Private International Law is the only global international organization that systematically approaches this problem. This organization has developed the Hague child protection system which regulates matters of parental responsibility, international adoption, child support obligations and child abduction. The aim of this dissertation is to prove that the Hague child protection system is based on common ideas embodied in all constituent Hague conventions, in spite of the fact that they deal with different issues and are commonly observed in isolation. They are important because, depending on the specific issue, they provide the unification of jurisdiction rules, applicable law, mutual recognition and enforcement of judgments. Moreover, they establish a system of international cooperation, whose efficiency is a prerequisite for the proper application of the unified norms. Cooperation is the only way of protecting children in matters where the unification could not be achieved. In addition, the thesis is based on the conception that the Hague child protection system is actually an extended and far-reaching arm of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in private international law matters. Given that the European Union has been concurrently creating its own (EU) system of private international law, it is very important to determine its correlation with the solutions envisaged in the Hague child protection system. Hence, these solutions may serve as a model for envisaging legal solution in the Private International Law of the European Union. Furthermore, the Hague child protection system can be analyzed from the aspect of its correlation with multilateral conventions of other international organizations (UN, Council of Europe) which have been ratified by the Republic of Serbia. The ultimate objective of this thesis is to prove that the Hague child protection system is the only comprehensive system for protecting the best interests of the child, which further implies that the Republic of Serbia shall finalize the process of creating its own comprehensive child protection system by ratifying all relevant Hague conventions.