The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Child Abduction established rules for returning children to their home countries when abducted by a parent, but when one of the countries involved in a custody dispute hasn’t signed the agreement, those protections sometimes go out the window.

A six-year-old child who identifies as a girl when he’s with his mother and as a boy when he’s with his father is at the center of an intense Texas custody battle, in which the mother has exclusive rights to make decisions regarding mental health.