Since April 2021, the Working Group on the development of a draft Practical Handbook under the 2000 Convention has been assisting the legal staff of the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) in drafting the very first handbook exploring the ways in which the Convention of 13 January 2000 on the International Protection of Adults works and should work in practice.
The purpose of this significant objective is to assist Contracting Parties with the interpretation and practical implementation of the Convention at stake.
Actually, the need to make an effort in this direction is integrated in the mandate that the Council on General of Affairs and Policy of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (CGAP) gave to the Permanent Bureau through its conclusions and recommendations in March 2019. In paragraph 34, the CGAP recommended the Permanent Bureau to investigate the practical operation of the Convention: after the elaboration of two questionnaires addressed to States in order to understand the main issues faced in the application of the Convention and in the light of their outcomes, the need to explain and clarify the answers to this questions has arisen. The Working Group, composed by members from different jurisdictions and professional experiences, was constituted in 2021 for this purpose, which is definitely writing a practical handbook on the Convention.
It is important to specify that during this long period of work, specifically on 9-11 November 2022, the First meeting of the Special Commission on the practical operation of the 2000 Protection of Adults Convention occured. The conclusions and recommendations adopted by the Special Commission on 11 November 2022 have been seriously taken into consideration in the drafting process of the Practical Handbook, which has been consistently modified three times over the years.
Thanks to regular meetings involving the Permanent Bureau staff and Working Group members, in February 2024 the third revised version of the revised draft Practical Handbook on the Operation of the 2000 Protection of Adults Convention was published and is currently available here.
It is the most recent version so far.
Even though it is still a draft, since it has not been approved yet, this third and last version of the revised practical handbook of the Convention should be considered as an important consultation tool for legal professionals, operators and many stakeholder, alongside the milestone that Lagarde’s Explanatory Report represents.