A 5-year-old girl was returned to live with her Japanese father in Sri Lanka in early April after being abducted by her mother and brought to Japan, a government official told The Japan Times on Wednesday.

It was the first time Japan fulfilled a court order mandating the return of a child to his or her country of habitual residence, in accordance with the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

The Convention aims to secure the swift return of children wrongfully taken across an international border by one of their parents.