Patricia Roush is an American activist who has pioneered the issue of international child abduction and has been at the forefront of this issue as it relates to Saudi Arabia.
Roush's own daughters, Alia and Aisha, were kidnapped by their non-custodial Saudi father and were never returned to the United States. Now grown, they remain in Saudi Arabia due to its ban on women traveling without a male guardian's permission. Reportedly, they are now both married as a result of arranged marriages and have children of their own. [1]
She has testified to the United States Congress to advocate more be done to repatriate kidnapped children. [2]
She has sought help from the U.S. government, and believes it has largely let her down; however, she cites former Saudi Ambassador Ray Mabus and U.S. Rep. Dan Burton (R-CA) as individuals who were particularly supportive. [3] She wrote At Any Price , detailing her experiences with the Saudi government.[ citation needed ]
An Amber Alert or a child abduction emergency alert is a message distributed by a child abduction alert system to ask the public for help in finding abducted children. It originated in the United States in 1996. The system is named for Amber Rene Hagerman, victim of an unsolved child murder case.
Abductions of Japanese citizens from Japan by agents of the North Korean government took place during a period of six years from 1977 to 1983. Although only 17 Japanese are officially recognized by the Japanese government as having been abducted, there may have been hundreds of others. The North Korean government has officially admitted to abducting 13 Japanese citizens.
Human rights in Saudi Arabia are a topic of concern. The Saudi government, which mandates Muslim and non-Muslim observance of Sharia law under the absolute rule of the House of Saud, have been accused of and denounced by various international organizations and governments for violating human rights within the country. The totalitarian regime ruling the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is consistently ranked among the "worstest" in Freedom House's annual survey of political and civil rights. On 28 December 2020, the Criminal Court in Riyadh sentenced a prominent Saudi women's rights activist to nearly 2 years in prison, drawing a renewed attention to the kingdom's human rights issues. Qorvis MSLGroup, a U.S. subsidiary of Publicis Groupe, has been working with Saudi Arabia amidst its executions of political protesters and opponents for more than a decade to whitewash its record of human rights abuses.
A missing person is a person who has disappeared and whose status as alive or dead cannot be confirmed as their location and condition are not known. A person may go missing through a voluntary disappearance, or else due to an accident, crime, death in a location where they cannot be found, or many other reasons. In most parts of the world, a missing person will usually be found quickly. While criminal abductions are some of the most widely reported missing person cases, these account for only 2–5% of missing children in Europe.
Jacqueline Pascarl, formerly known as Jacqueline Gillespie and Jacqueline Pascarl-Gillespie, is an Australian author, TV personality and parents' rights advocate and humanitarian aid worker. Pascarl came to public attention in 1992, when her children were covertly removed from Australia, illegally under Australian law, by their Malaysian father. One man was convicted, sentenced and then jailed as an accomplice. The Parliament of Australia characterised this removal as an "abduction."
International child abduction in Japan refers to the illegal international abduction or removal of children from their country of habitual residence by an acquaintance or family member to Japan or their retention in Japan in contravention to the law of another country. Most cases involve a Japanese mother taking her children to Japan in defiance of visitation or joint custody orders issued by Western courts. The issue is a growing problem as the number of international marriages increases. Parental abduction often has a particularly devastating effect on parents who may never see their children again.
Child laundering is a scheme whereby intercountry adoptions are effected by illegal and fraudulent means. It may involve the trafficking of children, the acquisition of children through monetary arrangements, deceit and/or force. The children may then be held in sham orphanages while formal international adoption processes are used to send the children to adoptive parents in another country.
Historically, women's rights in Saudi Arabia have been severely restricted. Recently however, women have been campaigning for their rights, like with the "women to drive" movement and the anti-male guardianship campaign, which have resulted in some improvements to their status during the second decade of the twenty-first century. Among the factors that define rights for women in Saudi Arabia are government laws, the Hanbali and Wahhabi schools of Sunni Islam, and the traditional customs of the Arabian Peninsula.
Child abduction or child theft is the unauthorized removal of a minor from the custody of the child's natural parents or legally appointed guardians.
International child abduction in Brazil comprises cases in which the removal of a child by one of the joint holders of custody or non-custodial or contested parents to Brazil in contravention of other laws of other countries and/or the desires of other custody claimants. The phenomenon of international child abduction is defined in international law and legislated on by the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which entered into force in Brazil on January 1, 2000 and aims to trace abducted children, secure their prompt return to the country of habitual residence and organize or secure effective rights of access. In 2010 Brazil was accused by the US State Department of being non-compliant with the Hague Convention.
The Office of Children's Issues is an agency of the Bureau of Consular Affairs, which in turn is part of the U.S. Department of State. The Office of Children's Issues was created in 1994 under the leadership of Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mary Ryan and that of her successor Maura Harty. The Office of Children's Issues develops and coordinates policies and programs related to international child abduction. In this respect, it is the U.S. Central Authority under the terms of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption.
As a result of its high level of immigration and emigration and its status as common source and destination for a large amount of international travel the United States has more incoming and outgoing international child abductions per year than any other country. To address this issue the United States played an active role in the drafting of the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Although the United States was one of the first nations to sign the Convention in 1981 the Convention did not enter into force for the US until 1988 with the enactment by Congress of the International Child Abduction Remedies Act which translated the Convention into US law.
Carlina Renae White, also known as Nejdra "Netty" Nance, is an American woman who solved her own kidnapping case and was reunited with her biological parents 23 years after being abducted as an infant from the Harlem Hospital Center in New York City. The case represents one of the longest known gaps in a non-parental abduction in which the victim was reunited with the family in the United States. For years, Carlina was living with a woman she thought was her mother, who was in fact her kidnapper. She was portrayed by Keke Palmer in the Lifetime film Abducted: The Carlina White Story.
Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is a Saudi businesswoman and a member of House of Saud. Part of her childhood was spent in Beirut, Lebanon. As a result of the Lebanese Civil War, she and her mother, Princess Jamila bint Asad Ibrahim Marei, moved between London and the United States. Princess Basmah is known for introducing the Fourth Way Law.
Dissidents have been detained as political prisoners in Saudi Arabia during the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. Protests and sit-ins calling for political prisoners to be released took place during the 2011–2012 Saudi Arabian protests in many cities throughout Saudi Arabia, with security forces firing live bullets in the air on 19 August 2012 at a protest at al-Ha'ir Prison. As of 2012, recent estimates of the number of political prisoners in Mabahith prisons range from a denial of any political prisoners at all by the Ministry of Interior, to 30,000 by the UK-based Islamic Human Rights Commission and the BBC.
Kidnapping in the United States is a major political and social issue, fraught with debate over the extent of the problem and the correct response.
Alicia Kozakiewicz is an American television personality, motivational speaker, and Internet safety and missing persons advocate. Kozakiewicz is the founder of the Alicia Project, an advocacy group designed to raise awareness about online predators, abduction, and child sexual exploitation. She is also the namesake of "Alicia's Law," which provides a dedicated revenue source for child rescue efforts. Kozakiewicz has worked with television network Investigation Discovery (ID) to educate the public on, and effect change for, issues such as Internet safety, missing people, human trafficking, and child safety awareness education.
There have been many human rights violations committed by various groups after the Yemeni Civil War. There are two main groups involved in the ongoing conflict: forces loyal to the current Yemeni president, Abh Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, and Houthis and other forces supporting Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former Yemeni president. On 29 November 2017, fighting between forces loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Houthis began in Sana'a. al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have also carried out attacks in Yemen. All sides of the conflict have been accused of human rights violations. Coalition forces led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States and other nations have also been accused of violating human rights and in some cases, breaking international law. The coalition forces intervened at Hadi's request, in an attempt to defeat the Houthis and restore Hadi's government. Coalition attacks, especially airstrikes, have been accused of causing large scale civilian deaths, but Saudi Arabia disputes these claims. The use of force by these groups has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis situation in Yemen, as critical infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed in attacks. In addition to the attacks, blockades of critical resources, such as fuel, to Yemen by Saudi Arabia have hindered the transport of food in Yemen, and the ability of civilians to travel to locations where there are adequate medical facilities. The situation in Yemen has been described as "one of the worst crises in the world" by the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen.
The Kidnapping of Angelo dela Cruz, a Filipino Overseas Filipino Worker working in Iraq, is an event that led to the withdrawal Filipino soldiers from the Multi-National Force – Iraq, a United States-led multinational coalition which was a participant in the Iraq War.
Angelina Acheng Atyam is a Ugandan human rights activist and midwife. In 1996, Atyam's daughter and 138 other girls were kidnapped from an Aboke school by guerrillas from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Atyam founded the Concerned Parents Association to advocate for the release of the captive children, and acted as the organization's spokesperson, travelling to Europe and the United States. In recognition of her work, she was awarded the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights in 1998. Atyam was reunited with her daughter in 2004.