The Hague Convention does not provide relief in many cases, resulting in some parents hiring private parties to recover their children.

Covert recovery was first made public when Don Feeney, a former Delta Commando, responded to a desperate mother's plea to locate and recover her daughter from Jordan in the 1980s.

[5] By 2007, both the United States, European authorities, and NGO's had begun serious interest in the use of mediation as a means by which some international child abduction cases may be resolved.

[7] Held at the University of Miami School of Law, Lawyers, Judges, and certified mediators interested in international child abduction cases, attended.

[9] The earliest nationally publicised kidnapping of a child by a stranger for the purpose of extracting a ransom payment from the parents was the Pool case of 1819, which took place in Baltimore, Maryland.

[citation needed] Nancy Gamble's crime and subsequent trial were reported in detail in Baltimore Patriot (June 26, 1819).

The June 26 article, as well as others on the case that had appeared in the Patriot, were reprinted in newspapers in other states including: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and Washington D.C.

The Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel paramilitary group operating mainly in northern Uganda, is notorious for its abductions of children for use as child soldiers or sex slaves.

[citation needed] Historically, a few states have practiced child abduction for indoctrination, as a form of punishment for political opponents, or for profit.

[15][16] In Australia the 'Stolen Generation' is the term given to native Aboriginal children who were forcibly abducted or whose mothers gave consent under duress or misleading information so the government could assimilate the black population into the white majority.

In addition, embryo theft and even oocyte misappropriation in reproductive medical settings have been legalistically construed as child abduction.

[23][24][25] The Network has 22 member countries: Albania, Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the US.

[27][28][29] The parents of Madeleine McCann, a three-year-old girl who disappeared from her bed in a hotel in Portugal in 2007, approached ICMEC to help them publicize her case.

ICMEC's YouTube channel, "Don'tYouForgetAboutMe," which lets people post videos, images, and information about their missing children, was launched that year as a part of these efforts, and as of November 2014[update] had 2,200 members.