Chronicles of Private International Law: highlights of HCCH’s work over the past three years

Resumo

These chronicles are dedicated to reviewing the past three years of intensive work carried out by the Hague Conference on Private International Law (“HCCH”) and serve as an update to the 2022 Chronicles . The HCCH has been modernizing itself, increasingly focusing on new topics, and enhancing the use of digital tools in its communications and the daily application of its conventions. Undoubtedly, the area of international legal cooperation is among the most active.
The paper covers both the HCCH’s post-conventional projects, which yield more immediate results - such as those led by Nadia de Araujo (OCJ), Arnaldo Silveira (maintenance obligations), Gustavo Ribeiro (Apostille), and Inez Lopes (domestic violence in the 1980 Convention) - as well as legislative projects, as developed by Lalisa Froeder Dittrich (Parentage), Fabricio Polido (Codifi), and Marcelo De Nardi and Nereida de Lima Del Águila (Jurisdiction Project). All chronicles incorporate the Conclusions and Decisions (“C&D”) of the 2025 Council´s meeting just held in March 2025 .
Nadia de Araujo describes one of the most famous and utilized pos conventional work of the HCCH in the procedural field, addressing the topic “The Innovations of the Service Convention (1965) and the Evidence Convention (1970): Outcomes of the 2024 Special Commission.”
Throughout the Chronicle, Nadia analyzes the Service Convention, along with a report on the 2024 Special Commission Meeting. Emphasis is placed on the topics and outcomes of the 2024 Special Commission that are of interest to Brazil, particularly regarding the electronic transmission of requests, which involves an increased use of information technology. The Chronicle also describes the innovations introduced by the 2024 Special Commission and the Working Groups established to review the Handbooks of the Service and Evidence Conventions, as well as the new Country Profiles, whose work, carried out after the meeting, was endorsed by CGAP 2025.
Arnaldo Silveira reports the necessity of a system like iSupport to facilitate cooperation in child support and maintenance obligations in general. iSupport offers tools for the multilingual electronic exchange of maintenance requests between countries, as well as for case management within and between different central authorities. A brief description of the system is made, and the progress of its implementation is reported, focusing on recent developments. The article also emphasizes Brazil's central role in iSupport development and the prospects for its local implementation. Looking forward, the article mentions the next steps in iSupport's evolution, towards maximizing its impact on families and individuals reliant on international maintenance payments.
Gustavo Ribeiro´s chronicle reports on the Apostille Convention, which has been in force since 1965 and simplifies the authentication of public documents for international use by eliminating the need for diplomatic or consular legalization. Brazil adopted the Convention in 2016, becoming its 110th Contracting Party, with global participation now at 127 countries. As Gustavo points out, Brazil recorded a peak of 2.8 million Apostille procedures in 2024, mainly for transnational legal matters. His article depicts two relevant aspects of the Convention. First, he shows that Article 1(3)(b) of the Convention excludes commercial and customs documents from its scope. Despite the exclusion, some Contracting Parties still apply Apostilles to trade-related documents such as certificates of origin and health certificates. Second, Gustavo calls attention to the practical use of the Convention. The Apostille Convention has been evolving with the introduction of the Electronic Apostille Programme (e-APP) to digitize and modernize the process. By 2024, 56 Contracting Parties had adopted at least one component of the e-APP, while 36 had fully implemented it. Furthermore, the e-APP saw accelerated adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the need for digital authentication.
Inez Lopes´s chronicle examines the challenges of applying the Hague Convention in domestic violence cases. The Forum on Domestic Violence and the Hague Convention, held in 2024, highlighted the legal complexities of balancing the Convention’s return principle with the need to protect victims. Courts struggle with interpreting Article 13(1)(b) and its “grave risk” exception, particularly when mothers flee abusive situations. The lack of judicial consensus and ineffective protective measures often lead to the re-victimization of women and children. The article calls for stronger protective mechanisms, judicial training, and a more integrated approach that aligns international legal frameworks with human rights, gender issues, and the best interests of the child.
Lalisa Froeder Dittrich´s text discusses the efforts of the HCCH to create a new international instrument to facilitate the recognition across borders of legal parentage, including concerning international surrogacy arrangements. It highlights the complexities associated with varying legal frameworks, which can lead to adverse situations for children, such as "limping parentage," where their rights—of knowing their origins, for instance—are jeopardized. The HCCH "Filiation/Surrogacy Project" arose from the need for harmonized laws to protect children's rights in the context of new family arrangements and the use of artificial reproductive methods, often with intending parents living in a different country than those of the child and/or the surrogate mother. The chronicle follows the project's development, highlighting the main points that the Working Group must address in the future instrument. Furthermore, it notes Brazil's active participation in the Experts and Working Group on Filiation/Surrogacy, underlining the initiative's relevance and impact on families navigating the challenges of cross-border parentage.
Fabricio Polido analyses the current intersection between the HCCH work and emerging digital technologies, particularly in response to developments in distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), blockchain, crypto-assets, and tokenization. These efforts were formalized under the HCCH mandate for PIL issues in Digital Economy and subsequently deepened thanks to the achievements of the HCCH Conference on Commercial, Digital and Financial Law Across Borders (Codifi), a broader initiative aimed at exploring the legal implications of the digital economy on existing HCCH instruments and new PIL-digital related issues. Among the key developments are the Expert Group on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and the Exploratory Project on Digital Tokens, both established under mandates from the Council on General Affairs and Policy (CGAP) in March 2024. These initiatives aim to assess jurisdictional and applicable law challenges, considering the emergence of CBDCs on a domestic scale, decentralized nature of digital assets, and their impact on cross-border financial transactions. This article explores the evolution, scope, and legal challenges of these projects, highlighting Brazil’s active role in shaping regulatory discussions through its Virtual Assets Law of 2023 and the Brazilian digital currency – Drex Project.
Finally, Marcelo De Nardi and Nereida de Lima Del Águila report on the 8th meeting of the Working Group on Jurisdiction, the latest of the Jurisdiction Project, ongoing for more than three decades work of The Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) regarding the issue of jurisdiction in situations connected to legal systems of more than two States. After the 2005 Convention on Choice of Court Agreements and the 2019 Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments, already in force, but not for Brazil, the work was directed to the theme of jurisdiction itself, and the scope of current work is to address problems arising from concurrent judicial proceedings, being them parallel proceedings or related actions. With this report, the public is offered the opportunity to understand the evolution of HCCH's legislative work on the subject, with a technical-political analysis based on the personal experience of the authors, who are members of the Brazilian Delegation negotiating for the initiative. The active involvement of the Brazilian Delegation in this project is a testament to Brazil's commitment to international legal cooperation. Since the draft convention is already fully structured, and ready to start the political discussion phase, it is convenient to inform the public of the proposed content to foster debate on the decisions to be taken during the negotiation of the future international treaty. The draft treaty's content touches on the interests of private individuals and companies involved in situations connected to the legal systems of more than one State, in “international” or “transnational” situations, notably those of a commercial nature.