"SPEECH PLACE AND SUFFICIENT MATURITY: INTERPRETING THE BEST INTEREST IN CHILD PARTICIPATION IN INTERNATIONAL ABDUCTION LAWSUITS IN BRAZIL".
Hearing. Child. International Abduction.
The current Research Project intends to delimit the study of international abduction from the perspective of child’s participation in the process. It seeks to verify how often and how this participation in judicial lawsuits of passive international cooperation of prompt return takes place in Brazil. The following problem is faced: does the lawsuit of prompt return in Brazil prioritize the child’s opinion? The hypothesis is that this opinion is little considered to form the court’s conviction, due to two main reasons: the lack of familiarity of federal courts with hearing children and the lack of independent representation in the process. These two strands of research – one procedural (representation of the child in court) and the other material (how the hearing of a child can influence judgement) – permeate the work, whose objective is to collect data on the best international practices with a view to evaluating how one interpret the superior interest of the child, examining points of controversy related to the topic of hearing the child at court.