Law and Internet Foundation is the coordinator of the iCare project. Today (10.11) a virtual working meeting with all partners was held.
International child abduction (ICA) occurs frequently in the EU, with 1,800 cases annually, and has an immense psychological and emotional impact on all children involved, which can be further exacerbated by a slow and complicated judicial process due to a lack of adequate cooperation among Central Authorities, legal practitioners and family mediators. Following from this, and taking the child’s best interests as a priority, the project iCare will develop and implement novel tools and activities to improve the situation of children in ICA cases through strengthening judicial cooperation and incorporating International Family Mediation (IFM) as complementary to judicial proceedings. This will result in a child-friendly, cost-effective and time-efficient judicial process in ICA cases. To this end, iCare will increase the capacity of national Central Authorities designated by the relevant legislation, legal practitioners (family law judges and lawyers) and family mediators, improving cooperation and information exchange among them. To achieve this, iCare will increase their knowledge on the current legal and administrative framework, accelerate the judicial process through creating minimum EU common standards and raise their awareness of judicial cooperation and the application of IFM.
The partners of the project are Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas (CERTH) – Information Technologies Institute (ITI) (Greece), DEFENCE FOR CHILDREN INTERNATIONAL- ITALIA (DCI – ITALIA), MIKK E. V. INTERNATIONAL MEDIATION CENTRE FOR FAMILY CONFLICTAND CHILD ABDUCTION, EUROPEAN FEDERATION FOR MISSING AND SEXUALLY EXPLOITED CHILDRENAISBL (MCE).
The project is implemented with the support of the Justice Programme of the European Commission under Grant Agreement No 101007436.