On Sept. 16, the Nairobi High Court on appeal will hold a crucial hearing that could determine the future of two children—a 6-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl—who hold Moroccan, British, and Kenyan citizenship. One year after being relocated from their habitual residence in Morocco to Kenya, they remain at the center of a legal battle that has increasingly become a race against time for their well-being.
On June 18, 2026, after months of legal proceedings, Nairobi’s Children’s Court, the court of first instance, issued a clear ruling: the children’s relocation to Kenya was unlawful, and their immediate return to Morocco was in their best interests.
In execution of that ruling, the father immediately reunited with his children and completed all departure formalities at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. The three passengers had checked in for their flight to Casablanca and had their boarding passes in hand when events took an unexpected turn. As they were about to board, the father was stopped—not by border police, but by airport personnel—who took him and the children to a police station. The children were then removed from his custody and handed over to their mother, even though a court had just ordered their return to Morocco. The precise circumstances of the intervention, as well as its legal basis, remain largely unexplained.
The following day, June 19, 2026, the High Court of Nairobi declared the mother’s application urgent and, within hours, granted an interim stay of execution of the lower court’s ruling. The order, however, did not overturn the Children’s Court’s findings that the relocation had been unlawful.
Since then, the proceedings have stalled. What was intended to be a temporary stay pending a full adversarial hearing has remained in effect, leaving the two children in a state of legal and personal uncertainty that has now lasted for a year. The approaching start of the school year has added further urgency to the case.
Based in Morocco, the father has spent the past year pursuing legal action and traveling repeatedly to Kenya in an effort to maintain contact with his children. Despite those efforts, he has continued to face obstacles in exercising his parental rights. Video calls remain infrequent, are strictly controlled by the mother, and have at times been terminated unilaterally.
He has also been excluded from major decisions concerning the children’s lives, including the choice of school ahead of the new academic year and matters relating to their healthcare, such as medical consultations and treatment. A formal notice sent by his legal counsel requesting that the principle of shared parental responsibility be respected has gone unanswered.
The June 18, 2026 ruling by Nairobi’s Children’s Court sets out the facts in detail. The two children, born in 2020 and 2023, had lived in Morocco since birth, where they had established their home, attended school, and built their family environment. In August 2025, their mother traveled with them to Kenya for what had been presented as a three-week vacation. Once there, she informed the father that she intended to settle permanently in the country.
The court found no evidence that the father had consented to such a permanent relocation. Among the evidence considered were WhatsApp exchanges indicating that the mother’s plan to remain in Kenya had been developed unilaterally.
Regarding parental capacity, the court found that both parents were fit to exercise their parental responsibilities. It noted that Kenyan law no longer automatically favors the mother in custody disputes involving young children and that decisions must instead be guided solely by the best interests of the child.
The ruling was, however, critical of the mother’s relocation plans. It pointed to the absence of evidence demonstrating stable employment, contradictory statements regarding her professional situation, the children’s financial dependence on their maternal grandfather for school expenses, and the higher cost of education in Kenya compared with Morocco.
The court also noted that the children had expressed attachment to both parents and to both countries, while observing that the mother had repeatedly restricted communication between the father and the children. It ultimately concluded that parental responsibility should remain joint, that Morocco remained the children’s habitual residence, and that their transfer to Kenya had taken place without the father’s consent and did not meet the legal criteria for permanent relocation.
Moroccan authorities have been closely monitoring the case. The Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have undertaken the necessary consular procedures and sent an urgent official communication to the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco in Nairobi, which has been tasked with closely following the case.
In Morocco, the case has sparked deep concern among the children’s relatives and those close to the family, who have been waiting for their return for the past year after the courts recognized that their relocation and resettlement by the mother had been unlawful.
The Sept. 16 ruling is expected to be pivotal. The Nairobi High Court on appeal will decide whether to maintain or lift the temporary stay that has so far prevented the enforcement of the lower court’s ruling.
