Kafalah in International and European Conventions

Currently, child protection measures represent a central issue within the leg¬islative framework set by the international community. This is in spite of the fact that individual member states have so far adopted different protective meas¬ures affecting the instruments and methods of the so-called taking into care of children as needed for cases of child abandonment in line with their own cul¬ture and traditions. In Western European law countries, the institution of adop¬tion constitutes a paradigmatic model for taking into care children and is cod¬ified both nationally and internationally. On the other hand, the provision of care by Islamic kafala is in itself different and even more complex in nature since it has no legal correspondence with secularised political systems and struc¬tures. As a result, the provision specifically requires legislative measures that are indispensable for the protection of the weakest groups of society, at least when the latter are mostly vulnerable or abandoned. The most recent interna¬tional conventions have placed much emphasis on the priority to be given to child protection rather than other personal interests. Even though such syn¬tagmatic principle is now lacking any theoretical definition of the boundaries that are deemed to be extremely weak, it has become a prevailing interpreta¬tive canon which requires the practitioner to aim for this particular rather than other objectives.