Y (A Child)

For the purposes of the Hague Child Protection Convention of 1996, the word measures is to be construed broadly. It includes a return order and protective undertakings given to an English court in support of it.

The Convention's recognition and enforcement provisions strengthen, rather than reduce, the established use of undertakings as protective measures in international child-abduction proceedings. A foreign legal opinion which does not address those provisions or the Convention's concept of measures cannot undermine that conclusion.

The father applied for the return to Cyprus of his four-and-a-half-year-old daughter under the 1988 Abduction Convention. The mother relied on Article 13(b), alleging risks of domestic violence and abuse if she and the child returned.

Parker J ordered the child's return subject to eleven protective undertakings by the father. After judgment, the Family Court of Limassol made an order for the registration, recognition and/or execution of Parker J's order.

The mother appealed the provision dealing with recognition of the English order. She also sought to rely on late Cypriot legal advice that the undertakings would not be enforceable there. The central issue was whether protective undertakings formed part of the Convention's measures capable of recognition and enforcement.

1. Permission to appeal was granted, but the appeal was dismissed. The Limassol order had in substance already provided the recognition which the mother had sought from Parker J. The correspondence from the Cypriot Network Judge did not cast doubt on that order. It simply declined to give legal advice on Cypriot law.

2. The court refused to admit the late Cypriot legal opinion. The point concerning cross-border use of undertakings could and should have been developed before Parker J. In any event, the opinion did not address Articles 23, 24, 26 or 28 of the Hague Child Protection Convention of 1996, or the Convention's use of the word measures.

3. The protective undertakings were measures for the purposes of those Articles. That expression was to be given a broad and practical construction. It would be erroneous in a common-law jurisdiction to exclude undertakings, which were extensively used in proceedings under the 1980 Convention to protect a returning parent and child.

4. The 1996 Convention was intended to support and supplement the effective operation of the 1980 Convention. It could not sensibly be construed as diminishing the effect or use of undertakings as protective measures. Parker J's order was therefore a package of measures designed to achieve protection on return.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Permission to appeal was granted and the appeal was dismissed: [2013] EWCA Civ 129.
• Family Division: Parker J ordered the child's return to Cyprus on 3 December 2012, subject to protective undertakings by the father.