The third meeting in 2023 of the Task Force on children involved in custody disputes, as chaired by the Directorate General for Italian Citizens Abroad of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the usual participation of officials from the Ministries of the Interior and Justice, set out new methods of intervention in response to the data recorded in the last period.
These indicate a lower number of cases handled by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs up to 30 June 2023 compared to the same period of the previous year (355 compared to 418), but with a worrying increase in the number of abductions towards Mediterranean and Asian countries, which present particularly complex aspects.
More specifically, in the first half of 2023, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs recorded a total of 100 new cases compared to 60 in the first half of 2022. To address this trend, especially in the Mediterranean and Asia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, working with the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior, has developed new proposals aimed mainly at preventing child abduction.
