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Chadian women protest against the trafficking of their children... |
Man's inhumanity to man is not only perpetuated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad; it is also perpetuated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Six French charity workers, convicted of attempting to kidnap 103 children in Chad are set to appear in court in France on January 14 to have their sentences reviewed. The sentences of eight years hard labor imposed by a Chadian court last week are set to be challenged at the hearing, a lawyer for one of the six said More >>>
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"Trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transporting, providing or obtaining, by any means, any person for labor or services involving forced labor, slavery or servitude in any industry, such as forced or coerced participation in agriculture, prostitution, manufacturing, or other industries or in domestic service or marriage" —
Global Rights
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As humanity leaps from one crisis to another, it is becoming a frequent occurrence that there are those who wish to profit from the orphans in such situations. Chad is not the first country to experience this phenomenon, as the problem is yet to be resolved in Eastern Europe.
This only speaks of the level of regard that traffickers have for life. The "humanitarian" charitable organization L'Arche de Zoé has found itself under the spotlight in such a scenario pertaining to 103 children,
mostly Chadians, not Darfuris or even Sudanese as the arrested members of L'Arche de Zoé purported.
The Children
Aging between 3 – 8 years, the 103 children were about to board the chartered flight. They were taken into care by the Chadian authorities with the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the UN Refugee Agency involved. They were eventually taken to an orphanage, until they can be returned to their families. An aid official said, "The children are now in an orphanage in Abéché, in the care of the Chadian Ministry of Social Affairs, the UN Refugee Agency, the UN Children's Fund, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. They have received food, clothes, and recreational materials and will be returned to their families in Tiné, Adré, and Goz Béïda" (IRIN).
The families that these children come from live in villages, according to the accounts of the children. Naturally, the children cry at night for their families, who may not have any idea of where their children are.
Mission Darfur
On the L'Arche de Zoé website, the English page is void, but on their main page in French, 1642,930 Darfuri children are referred to as being "in mortal danger and must be saved now"!
According to a blog called The Passion and the Present (whose sole focus is Sudan), the French foreign ministry knew of L'Arche de Zoé as far back as August 2007 and even issued a warning in the knowledge that neither Chad nor Sudan authorizes adoption.
A number of French and Belgian host families paid for the children to be flown to Vatry Airport, east of Paris, France.
L'Arche de Zoé was established as a humanitarian organization. In the early reports of the news of trafficking in Chad, the UN denied all knowledge of such organization, "The charity is not known here and has never been registered," said the head of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Sudan, Antoine Gerard (AFP).
Zoé's Ark
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Under the acronym ZAF, the profile of L'Arche de Zoé on the Tsunami Relief Database, which arose out of the Tsunami Disaster, is as follows:
Registered as a foundation in Australia, Zoé's Ark Foundation (L'Arche de Zoé) was born the day after the Tsunami, under the spark and the union of two waves of solidarity. Initially created by Guillaume Catala in memory of Reggie Shiu and his family, who disappeared on last December Tsunami in Thailand, the foundation carries the name of his daughter Zoé, 6 years old, who miraculously survived this catastrophe. Zoé, meaning life in Greek, has become the symbol of life after the storm for all the children who have survived …. Eric Breteau, the president of the French Federation of 4x4, and Guillaume Catala have also merged their Tsunami projects to give birth to a more efficient Zoé's Ark.
L'Arche de Zoé is listed in the list of NGOs on the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) website under "Ongoing Projects," 2005, with a base of operations in
• Aser, Aceh, with the acronym ADZ — L'Arche de Zoé
• Aser, Aceh, with the acronym ZAF — Zoé 's Ark Foundation
It is listed under the Indonesian Aceh Forum Community of NGOs as:
• Banda, Aceh, with the acronym ADZ
On an Indonesian blog list of NGOs, it is listed as:
• Banda, Aceh, ADZ — L'Arche de Zoé
• Banda, Aceh, ZAF — Zoé's Ark Foundation
On the organization's "List ofAceh Health," it is listed as:
• Banda, Aceh, ADZ — L'Arche de Zoé
• Banda, Aceh, ZDF — ZDF Television-Media
When news first broke, the link to their website as given at the end of their above mentioned profile, the page was blank, in returning to the link, it opened to the following statement:
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STATEMENT
October 27, 2007
There has been recent Press surrounding the French charity called "L'Arche de Zoé", which charity has been named and reported in the Press as Zoe's Ark, which is the literal translation.
Zoe's Ark Foundation Inc. has no legal link nor associated with, related to or connected with the French charity "L'Arche de Zoé" and Zoe's Ark Foundation Inc. does not endorse or condone any of the activities undertaken by the French charity "L'Arche de Zoé".
Zoe's Ark Foundation Inc. was set up for Tsunami relief which ceased operations in December 2006.
All enquiries email
admin@261204.org
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Reason to Doubt
The operation involved six members (French and Belgian) of L'Arche de Zoé. They were found and arrested at AbéchéAirport in Chad. In addition, seven Spanish crew members of the flight chartered by L'Arche de Zoé have been detained. Confusion reigned because in Chad the organization is known as Children's Rescue. Children's Rescue was modified in Arabic (one of two languages spoken in Chad) as Save the Children. According to a UN agency report:
"There was some confusion at the beginning. We clarified that immediately with the local authorities, who then broadcast messages on local radio clarifying that Save the Children and other NGOs had nothing to do with these activities, said Aurélie Lamazière, of Save the Children UK's emergencies department". (IRIN)
In Islam, adoption is not allowed. It is considered that the child should know his or her parentage. Part of that parentage includes culture and religion. A humanitarian organization yet sought to take those children from a culture totally different from that of the host families. In a country that does not allow international adoption, like Chad, the members of such organizations stand to get up to 20 years of forced labor in prison.
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Global Patterns of Human Trafficking Reported
Africa 21%
Eastern Asia 17%
South Central Asia 5%
South Eastern Asia 24%
Western Asia & Turkey 19%
Commonwealth of Independent States 36%
Central & South Eastern Europe 43%
Western Europe 41%
North America 3%
Latin America 21%.
Oceania 3%
— Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns - UN 2006 Report
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For us, it was never — and I insist, never — a question of being an adoption agency. These children were not destined for adoption. Our approach was simple: We just wanted to save them from death by offering them a host family, Stéphanie Lefebvre, secretary general of L'Arche de Zoé, told Le Parisien. (IRIN)
They deny human trafficking, and they deny adoption, so it "seems" that they were "temporarily" taking the children away from conflict to families in a country where there is a clampdown on immigration (President Sarkozy is considering DNA testing to stem the flow of migrants).
They intended to take the children to a country where racial hatred and Islamophobia are on the rise and where Arabs and Africans in general live in ghettos. They "seem" to have sought to help the children receive a healthy and balanced upbringing by French families who paid for them, with the help of an organization that seems to be in denial about its branches! Interesting; very interesting!
The Country
Chad became independent from France in 1960. In Chad, the lingua franca is French and Arabic along with 120 languages. Of the people, 51 percent are Muslims and 35 percent are Christians.
The population in Chad is heavily dependent on subsistence farming and livestock, which have been undermined by the current Sudanese refugee crisis. Chad has few recognized natural resources for export. One of its potential natural resources consists of oil reserves, which are being explored by foreign companies.
Chad is a country that is not stable. It has minimal social services and a paid primary education system that not everyone can afford, despite the fact that
education is officially free. With 53,000 of it citizens displaced, Chad has received over 234,000 Sudanese refugees, according to UN statistics at the end of 2006.
Chadian Daniel Deuzoumbe Passalet wrote on the topic of commercial sex in his country a report entitled A Situational Analysis of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Chad.
Chadian girls remain virgin until marriage. The subject of sex is a taboo in the country's traditional culture. In page 4 of the report, Passalet said:
"Among the Moundang [Muslim] people for instance, just one sexual encounter (alleged or proven) is enough for a girl to be ostracized".
However, there is commercial sex in Chad. During the 1979–1982 civil war, prostitution became apparent. There were over 40,000 deaths, which has left a big increase in woman-led households and single parents.
Without any other means of income, some widows turned to prostitution. The economic situation was bad, and some of those fathers remaining were not shouldering the responsibility supporting their families. Male children frequented the streets, and — in Chadian terms — they became street children.
From these street children, some boys turned to drugs and some girls to prostitution. Outcast, girls caught fornicating were expected to marry their male sexual encounter. Like anywhere else, there are powerful and corrupt men; they benefit from the sales in trafficking (Passalet: p.5).
Passalet described:
"According to local accounts we collected, French legionnaires bring girls with them when returning from active duty but abandon them once in France. For example, a Chad girl of 17 years of age was brought to France under these conditions and her family has not heard anything from her since 1982 despite help from the Chad Human Rights League and the French embassy in Chad". (p.6)
And then there is the trafficking between African countries:
"Such shameful trafficking also exists between Chad and Nigeria. In 1993, a young girl aged 9 was kidnapped by strangers while she was in a market named Ba-illi (near N'Djamena) and trafficked to Nigeria. She managed to escape at the beginning of 2003. She stated that she was used as a sexual object during her captivity. According to her account, there are other Chad girls living under similar conditions in Nigeria. The main clients of these trafficking victims are French legionnaires who have acquired the nickname "Gobi."" (p.6)
Passalet gives many more accounts of forms of trafficking and commercial sex in his 2003 report. However, the aim of citing his report is to demonstrate that the problem exists prior to L'Arche de Zoé, hence why they might have felt that kidnapping 103 children is not a problem.
The problem exists within the country and with other African and Middle Eastern countries. Yet, a humanitarian organization would not have made such an error to assume that it could just take children by ignoring the laws of a country that is not even its own. Whatever the reason, profiteering from the live bodies of children or any human cannot be considered acceptable. It only speaks of a dysfunctional society with nonfunctional values.
What is apparent in the many news reports is the way in which words like misunderstanding are employed with this situation. Even Writers Without Borders feel that the three French journalists should not be apart from their colleagues and that the six members of L'Arche de Zoé should not be charged.
Also the Chadian women who protested about the affair were referred to as a "mob." These women were perceived as Africans, and thus a mob, not protesters or Muslims, in which case they might be referred to by some Islamophobic label - or even as women.
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Sources:
"Aceh Forum Community of NGO's " Last accessed November 11th 2007
HIC Sumatra"Aceh Health Information " February 2005 Last accessed November 11th 2007
PersaudaraanacehAceh Blogspot Last accessed November 11th 2007
BBC. "Prison Likely in Chad Child Row" Last accessed November 11th 2007
Ferran. Trans. Daniel Deuzoumbe Passalet.A Situational Analysis of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Chad, 2003 Last accessed November 11th 2007
Indonesian Relief (Tsunami Relief Database) "Zoe's Ark Foundation: Profile " Last accessed November 11th 2007
L'arche de Zoe Last accessed November 11th 2007
Last accessed November 11th 2007
The Passion of the Present. The Passion in the Present Last accessed November 11th 2007
UNMIS Response Sheet Report: Ongoing Project District Subdistrict Organization Last accessed November 11th 2007
UN "Consolidated Appeals Process: Appeal 2007 for Chad" Last accessed November 11th 2007
Zoé's Ark Foundation Zoes Ark Foundation Last accessed November 11th 2007
And Zoes Ark Foundation Last accessed November 11th 2007
UNODC Trafficking in Persons: Global Pattern Last accessed November 11th 2007
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