Pakistan's Supreme Court To Hear Challenge To Agreement With UK On Child Custody

The United Kingdom-Pakistan Judicial Protocol on Children Matters is being challenged in Pakistan's Supreme Court. The Protocol provides that when a child is wrongfully removed from, or retained in, the UK or Pakistan, the courts in that country will not normally make decisions about residence (custody) or contact. Instead, they will order the child to be returned to his or her home country, so that the courts there can hear the case. (UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office summary.) However, according to the Pakistan Daily Times, today the Supreme Court will hear a case in which a father claims that principles of Islamic law should override the Protocol. At issue is a legal battle for custody of a British girl, now held by her father in Pakistan. The Lahore High Court had ruled that the girl should be returned to her mother. However her father says that Islamic law prohibits the girl being sent to her mother who is living in an adulterous relationship with another man. He claims that Pakistani law does not give effect to the Protocol.