Parents have the right to have contact with their children and vice versa. Children have the right to have their best interests taken as a primary consideration, the right to be heard and the right to have due weight given to their views. There seems to be tension between these rights when a child refuses to have contact with one parent, especially when that child is allegedly manipulated or influenced by the other parent. The aim of this chapter is to examine which elements are taken into account by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the assessment of the way in which the national authorities handle the non-compliance with a contact arrangement due to the refusal of an allegedly manipulated child.

INTRODUCTION

When parents no longer live together, the right of the parents to have contact with their child must be concretised in a residence or access arrangement (hereafter: contact arrangement). If parents fail to reach an agreement, the arrangement will be made by the court‘s decision. Unfortunately, in situations in which there is a high degree of conflict, it often happens that these arrangements are not complied with.

In this chapter, the focus is on situations in which there is a refusal by a child to have contact with one of the parents. This refusal can be well grounded, for example in the case of abuse. It sometimes occurs, however, that a child expresses negative feelings towards one of the parents because that child is being manipulated by the other parent. A child might also experience a conflict of loyalty, and may feel that the parent with whom the child resides would be hurt if he or she does not refuse to have contact with the other parent. Especially in these situations, there may be tension between the right of the parent to family life, as protected by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and the best interests of the child and the child's right to be heard, which are protected in both the European Convention on Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (infra sections 2.2 – 2.4).