Article 20 of the 1980 Hague Abduction Convention

Article 20 of the Hague Abduction Convention provides that a return application may be refused if the return "would not be permitted by the fundamental principles of the requested State relating to the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms." The provision, which emerged after lengthy negotiations, embodies a political compromise between those delegates who supported and those who resisted the insertion of a "public policy" clause in the Convention.' Professor Adair Dyer (the then Deputy Secretary General of the Hague Conference on Private International Law) detailed the legislative history of Article 20 as follows:
The Commission which drafted the Convention consistently refused to allow a
general exception to the duty to return children based on 'public policy' or on the
'general principles of family law of the requested State' but, in extremis, in order to avoid a possible reservation based on the latter grounds, Article 20 was accepted.