On December 16, 2014, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) ruled (French only) in Chbihi Loudoudi and Others v. Belgium that Belgium did not violate Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention) when it refused to allow a child to be adopted by her aunt and uncle, who had become her Kafala guardians, an Islamic institution undertaken voluntarily “to provide for a child’s welfare, education and protection.”  According to the press release, the Court decided that, “taking into account the existence of a legal parent-child relationship with [the child’s] genetic parents in Morocco, the Belgian authorities had thus been entitled to consider that their refusal to grant adoption was in the child’s best interests, by ensuring the maintaining of a single parent-child relationship in both countries.”  Additionally, the refusal of adoption did not deprive “the applicants of all recognition of the relationship between them, because the procedure of unofficial guardianship was still open to them . . . even though its outcome was uncertain.”