Every year, some South African women living overseas become trapped in a cycle of violence: unable to leave abusive partners and return home with their children due to the provisions of the Hague Convention.

There are well-meaning international treaties whose names develop unintended but chilling connotations.

Among certain circles of foreign women trying to leave abusive relationships with their children, the Hague Convention has become one of them.

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It has even acquired a verb. To be "Hagued" is to be caught by the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction: a treaty adopted in 1980 to prevent children being unlawfully removed across borders, but which critics say is now routinely weaponised by abusive partners to prevent women and children from escaping violence.

"It has become a fearful term among women in foreign countries who cannot leave with their children for fear of vengeful partners," says Katherine, a South African woman whose daughter and granddaughter are trapped in South Korea.

(Katherine is a pseudonym, for safety reasons.)

"If people understood that it means that South African citizens can't come home ... that to me is just completely horrifying."

Domestic violence irrelevant

"Under The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction 1980, a child is considered abducted if they are taken across international borders by one parent without the other parent's consent," explains the website of Hague Mothers, a...