This archive report was first published on 6 December 2019.
On December 6, 2019, a New York court was informed that an American man, Claude Dary, was embroiled in a custody battle for his two-year-old son, Rowan.
According to Dary, his Kenyan girlfriend had taken Rowan from his Manhattan home in New York without his knowledge and had flown back to Kenya with the child the following week.
After a Manhattan Family Court judge ruled in May that the Kenyan woman should return the boy to the US, the decision was stayed following an appeal by her attorney.
A hearing for Dary's appeal is scheduled for late January 2020.
Despite reaching out to the US State Department and the Kenyan Embassy, Dary was informed in a letter that Kenya is not a signatory to the 1990 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, making it difficult to facilitate Rowan's return.
