Call For Papers
Call For Papers
We invite paper presentations that focus on the suggested streams listed below. There is however room to consider papers on any area of family law or children's rights that might be of interest to an international congress.
Suggested streams are:
Better care of children:
- Preventing the exploitation of and trafficking in children for labour, prostitution, commercial and non-commercial surrogacy, respecting the rights of children in utero)
- Children as refugees; The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on Refugees
- How to further international cooperation, information sharing and law enforcement.
- Dealing with online sexual and other exploitation of children
- Gender dysphoria: the law/medicine/responsibility for therapeutic surgery
- What would UNCROC look like if drafted in 2013
- What is the role of the court and legal system, if any, in the education of litigants and the public generally?
Protecting the rights of indigenous and multicultural children and preserving their cultures
- Fostering and adoption
- Civil family law systems and recognition of indigenous/multicultural issues
- Special difficulties in relocation cases
Juvenile Crime and Justice
- What are the social conditions that create juvenile crime/disadvantage?
- Physical and mental disability
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Lack of education/health care
- Lack of family support
- Welfare dependance
- Is a juvenile justice system the appropriate way to deal with that social situation?
- Is a specialist juvenile justice system the optimum? Can there be alternative streaming for young offenders?
- How do we change adult and child behaviour through treatment programs rather than the criminal law system?
Family Law Issues:
- Resolving the forum conveniens in a standard way: a "Hague Convention" for financial matters?
- The international recognition and enforcement of orders, child support agreements and financial agreements, including pre-nuptial agreements
- The Hague and non-Hague convention countries: how can it work better? How should international relocation be approached and resolved? International child abduction and protection issues.
- International arbitration and mediation;
- How can the views of the child be ascertained and taken into account in an international family situation?
- When we listen to children, do we hear what they are saying?
Effect of family violence on children
- What causes it?
- How can we deal with it?
- How do we protect children (and adults) from it?
- What skills are necessary for agencies such as police, child care workers and others require to protect children?
- The dilemma of sexual abuse allegations; how should they be dealt with/evaluated? How should "ambiguous" behavior be interpreted? When (if ever) is "sexualized behavior "normal"?
Education
- Deficits in the education of children: how do we teach them their "rights"?
- Legislation: does it lead or follow social standards?
- What does research tell us about families? What research is needed? How do we learn from it?
- What is the role of legal studies at school?
- Is there a need for a national human rights institution? What is its mature? Role? How can its advocacy be effective?
- What is the balance between public duty and private obligation?
Expert analysis, evaluation and therapy:
- Psychiatric and psychological disorders
- Children and same sex parents
- Right of a child to express his/her sexual orientation and our attitude towards that.
- The role of forensic psychiatry/psychology in assessing the best interests of the child.
- How to deal with difficult family dynamics: child care arrangements, children's behavioural patterns
Access to Justice
- Public support for the cost of family law proceedings
- The self represented litigant
- The laws delay