A Children's Bill for Hong Kong?

Professor Anne Scully-Hill

One of the principal aims of this Forum is to raise awareness of legal issues relating to children lives; a further aim is to learn from existing research to promote a multi-disciplinary approach to addressing those issues in the best possible way.

One legal issue which has been a focal point for discussion at previous fora, has been the way in which Hong Kong law shapes decisions about the child’s relationship and living arrangements with parents post-separation. This law has not been amended substantively by legislation in decades despite calls for reform from lawyers, commentators and even from the Judiciary. The current law on custody is outmoded, outdated and woefully inadequate in terms of what we now know about how children and their parents respond to custody proceedings and the consequent custody orders.

In 2005 the Law Reform Commission published its paper on Child Custody and Access, proposing an overhaul of the laws relating to post-separation parent-child arrangements. Now, ten years later, the Hong Kong Government is engaged in drafting a Bill to implement, in one form or other, a significant portion of the Commission’s proposals.

However, during those ten years, much has changed. We now live in a virtually-connected world, international travel and mobility of families has increased exponentially as has the fluid and varied shape of family life. We now also know so much more about the impact of hostility during and after separation on children.

Whilst we know that the Bill is in the process of being drafted, it is not yet available and so we can only hope that the advances made in expert knowledge about children, child development, dispute resolution, the effective use of technology and the increasingly diverse forms of family life, especially post-separation, will be reflected in the draft legislation. We also look forward to the opportunity at this forthcoming Third Forum to discuss and comment on the draft legislation so that the children of Hong Kong get the excellent law that they deserve.