Onyoja Momoh, 2020 recipient of the International Grant (FLBA) with support from the POAM project Grant, at the 23rd Annual Family Law Conference by Miller du Toit Cloete Inc / University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa, 11 to 13 March 2020.
On 11 to 13 March 2020, our Dr Onyoja Momoh represented the Centre for Private International Law at the 23rd Annual Miller du Toit Cloete Inc / University of the Western Cape Annual Family Law Conference in Cape Town, South Africa. She attended as both speaker and participant at this conference which brought together judges, advocates, lawyers (Barristers and Solicitors) and academics from around the world. The event commenced with a tour of the High Court and Magistrates Court; delegates were welcomed by judges and court staff who were generous with their time in explaining the South African legal system. This profoundly enlightening conference included presentations on the work of the Hague Conference on international child abduction (The Guide to Good Practice on Article 13(1)b) has just been published), adoption, maintenance, parentage and surrogacy. Papers were also delivered on topics including, but not limited to, surrogacy and assisted reproduction, human trafficking and the ongoing reform of South African marriage law. Dr Momoh presented on the POAM project which is led by the University of Aberdeen – Dr Katarina Trimmings and Dr Isla Callander - with a core consortium of research partners in Croatia (Professor Mirela Zupan), Germany (Professor Anatol Dutta) and Italy (Professor Costanza Honorati). It is an EU funded project on the Protection of Abducting Mothers in Return Proceedings: Intersection between Domestic Violence and Parental Child Abduction. POAM focuses on work to prevent and combat gender-based violence and violence against children in the context of international parental child abduction. The project explores the operation of Regulation 606/2013 on mutual recognition of protection measures in civil matters, the Directive 2011/99/EU on the European Protection Order and the 1996 Hague Child Protection Convention in protecting children and their mothers. Further information about the work of the POAM project team and progress can be found here: https://research.abdn.ac.uk/poam/. An article on the Conference will be published by the Bar Council in coming weeks.