A Child Has Been Taken or Not Returned: The First Steps

If a child is in immediate danger, contact the police on 999 or the ambulance service on 998. Those are emergency services, not legal advice, and they come first.

Beyond that immediate step, what happens in the first hours and days after a child is taken or not returned tends to shape everything that follows. This page sets out the practical sequence. It is deliberately short on legal analysis and long on what to do, because in this situation the ordering of steps matters more than understanding the doctrine.

What this situation usually is

Two different things get called abduction, and the distinction matters practically:

• Wrongful removal — a child taken out of the country without the necessary consent or authority.
• Wrongful retention — a child who travelled lawfully and has not been returned when they should have been.

Retention is the more common of the two and the more often mishandled, because the first days look like a misunderstanding. If a return date has passed and you are being given reasons rather than a flight number, treat it as retention and act accordingly.

The first twenty-four hours

1. Establish where the child is and that they are safe. Everything else depends on this. If you cannot establish it, or you believe the child is at risk, contact the police on 999.
2. Preserve everything, unedited. The travel consent, the tickets, the messages, the emails, the calendar. Do not delete, annotate, crop or tidy anything. Screenshot conversations in full rather than extracting the useful lines.
3. Write the timeline now. Dates and times of the departure, the agreed return, each communication, each promise, each refusal. Contemporaneous notes carry weight that reconstructed ones do not.
4. Ask for the return in writing, once, clearly and calmly. Name the date, name the flight if you can, ask for confirmation. Keep it civil — this message will be read by others, and its tone will matter.
5. Take advice in both countries, today. Not one and then the other. Steps in one place affect what is possible in the other, and some options narrow with time.
6. Locate the child’s documents — passports, birth certificate, school records, any existing order — and note who holds what.

What not to do

• Do not retaliate. Removing or retaining the child yourself, or taking a sibling, converts a strong position into a complicated one and can create criminal exposure.
• Do not conduct it in public. Social-media posts, appeals to communities and public accusations reduce your options and can harm the child.
• Do not agree to informal arrangements to keep the peace without advice. Accepting a “temporary” extension can affect the characterisation of what has happened.
• Do not obtain evidence unlawfully. Accessing the other parent’s accounts or devices without entitlement creates a separate and serious problem — see preserving digital evidence.
• Do not wait. The single most common regret in these cases is the fortnight spent hoping it would resolve.

Treaty position: check, do not assume

Many people arrive expecting a treaty return process, because that is what international coverage of child abduction describes. That expectation has to be tested against the actual position for the countries involved.

The official HCCH status table for the Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, checked on 10 September 2026, does not list the United Arab Emirates among the Contracting Parties.

Three things follow, and all three matter:

• Do not build a plan around a Hague Central Authority return application for a UAE leg of the case. It should not be assumed to be available.
• This finding concerns the 1980 Convention only. It is not a statement about the UAE’s position under any other HCCH instrument or any other international agreement, and it must not be reported as one.
• It must be re-checked at the time you act. Status tables change, and accession can require acceptance before an instrument operates between two particular states. Where a leg of the case runs between two other countries that are both parties, the Convention may still be relevant to that leg.

What the absence of a treaty route does not mean is the absence of options. It means the pathway is different, and it is country-specific.

Routes that may be available instead

Which of these applies depends on the facts, the countries and the applicable framework, and each needs advice rather than assumption:

• UAE domestic applications concerning the child’s arrangements, travel or protection — see urgent and interim applications.
• Proceedings in the country where the child now is, under that country’s domestic law.
• Recognition or enforcement of an existing order in the other country — see enforcing UAE orders abroad.
• Bilateral or regional instruments, where any operate between the two states.
• Criminal or administrative processes, where the conduct engages them.
• A negotiated voluntary return, structured carefully and recorded, which is often faster than any contested route and should never be dismissed.

Evidence that actually helps

Cases of this kind turn on a small number of documents rather than volume:

• The written travel consent, exactly as given, with its dates and scope.
• Tickets and booking confirmations, including the return leg.
• Any existing order or agreement about the child, and proof it was in force.
• Messages in which the return was discussed, in full context.
• Evidence of the child’s habitual life here — school enrolment, medical registration, tenancy, activities.
• A record of what you did and when, from the moment the return date passed.

If you are the parent who has not returned the child

This page is written for the parent left behind, but the position of the other parent is worth stating plainly, because early advice changes outcomes here too.

If you have kept a child beyond an agreed return because you believe they are at risk, that concern may be entirely legitimate — and handling it by staying and saying nothing is nonetheless the approach most likely to damage your position. Take advice immediately in both countries. Raising a protection concern through a proper process, promptly, is treated very differently from a retention that is explained months later.

Practical prevention, for anyone reading this before it happens

• Write travel consent for one trip at a time, with exact dates, destination, the passport used and the return arrangements — see child travel consent.
• Know who holds each passport, and record every handover.
• Build travel into a parenting plan rather than negotiating it each time — see writing a parenting plan.
• Keep a current chronology and copies of key documents reachable from your phone.
• If you have a real concern about a proposed trip, raise it in writing before the flight, not after.

Looking after yourself and the child

These cases are exhausting and they run on a longer timescale than anyone wants. Two practical points. Keep the child out of the strategy — do not use contact calls to gather information or to send messages to the other parent. And keep your own records in order, because a parent who can produce a calm, dated, accurate account is in a materially better position than one who cannot, however strong the underlying facts.

Related guidance on this site

• International child abduction options
• Child abduction
• Travel bans and restrictions
• Passports and travel consent
• International child relocation: evidence and planning
• Urgent protection FAQs

Speak with Mr AlBalooshi & Team

If a child has been taken or not returned, act now rather than waiting to see whether it resolves itself.

Use the enquiry form on this page with a short outline of the matter, or contact the office on +971 50 627 5196 by telephone or WhatsApp. Please describe the position briefly rather than sending a full document set, and say if there is a hearing, a deadline or a travel date. Making an enquiry does not by itself create a lawyer–client relationship.

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