The 1980 Hague Convention and Its Georgian Implementation
When a parent and a child are in different countries and contact or the child's return becomes the question, the matter concerns the Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Georgia is a party to this Convention — Georgia acceded in 1997 and the Convention has been in force for Georgia since 1 October 1997, operating also in relations with the United States. The Georgian implementation of the Convention is defined by special norms of the Civil Code: the central authority — a structural subdivision of the Ministry of Justice of Georgia — and the court form the legal channel through which the parent enters.
This page describes precisely that Georgian layer: who is an applicant, what the rights of custody and of contact are, when a removal or retention is wrongful, and how an application is made to the central authority and to the court — in both directions: when the child has left Georgia, and when the child is in Georgia.