The High Court has ruled that two girls, aged 10 and six, whose mother brought them to the UK without their father’s consent should return to Zimbabwe.
The girls and their parents were Zimbabwean nationals. The parents had married in 2014 but never lived together, and the girls had spent time with both of their parents as well as their grandparents while living in Zimbabwe. The mother moved to the UK in 2022, and in April 2025 she brought the girls here, without the father’s knowledge or consent. The father applied to the Court under the Child Abduction and Custody Act 1985, incorporating the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, for an order for the girls’ return to Zimbabwe. The mother opposed the application.
The Court considered an opinion from the High Court in Zimbabwe that the mother’s unilateral removal of the girls to the UK had breached the father’s rights of custody and therefore constituted wrongful removal under Article 3 of the Convention. While the question of whether the removal was wrongful for the purposes of Article 3 was for the High Court in England to decide, the Court saw no compelling reason to reject the opinions expressed by the Zimbabwean authorities. The girls had not had direct contact with their father since January 2025, but the Court was satisfied that he was still exercising his rights of custody at the time of their removal. Accordingly, the removal was wrongful.
The mother had made allegations of neglectful care by the girls’ paternal grandmother. However, the Court noted the evidence of their CAFCASS officer that they had not expressed any particularly negative views about life in Zimbabwe. Taking the mother’s allegations at their highest, they fell well short of the threshold required to establish a defence under Article 13(b) of the Convention that there was a grave risk that the girls’ return would expose them to physical or psychological harm or otherwise place them in an intolerable situation.
The CAFCASS officer’s report stated that the girls had expressed a strong wish to remain in the UK. They both clearly valued having their mother more present in their lives, but also loved and missed their father and their other relatives in Zimbabwe. The Court observed that a strong wish to stay did not amount to an objection to returning for the purposes of Article 13(2) of the Convention, but was more than simply a preference. Considering how it would exercise its discretion if the girls did object to returning, the Court observed that policy considerations underlying the Convention and welfare considerations pointed towards their return.
The mother argued that the girls were settled in the UK for the purposes of Article 12 of the Convention, in that they were enjoying life with her and her wider family here, at school and generally. However, that defence was not open to her as the proceedings had been commenced less than one year after the girls’ removal from Zimbabwe. The Court made the return order sought by the father.
