Comments on: Chad: French NGO Adoption Scandal

By: Josephine

Josephine — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:03:49 +0000

As a French person, I am quite torn by the issue. I truly belive that Arche de Zoe’s founder, Eric Breteau had very good intentions. Here’s the situation, there are hundreds of families in France who want and have the money to adopt and on the flip side there are thousands of children from Dafur who are dying everyday due to the genocide. Breteau put the two together and realized that the equation looked that easy. Yet due to his secrecy since he knew very well that his actions were illegal, there were many complications to his actions. It turned that that Chadian officials saw this as a great opportunity to trick the NGO and collected non-orphan children to be taken by the association so that they could have better opporunities in France. Yes, Breteau acted illegally and it is completely wrong to take away children illegally especially if they have parents and without proper procedure but then we have to ask ourselves how else can we help to stop this violence? I mean, the UN security council ins’t doing much in Darfur and there are so many laws protected adoptions rights, should we just wait and let all these children die? Breteau’s mission definitely went wrong, but at least he gave a wake up call saying that while governments are wondering about the next steps to take to stop this genocide, there is is one child who dies every five minutes in Darfur.

By: Misanga

Misanga — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:04:09 +0000

Poor Africa! Over 50 years of “political independence” an ex-colonial president can fly in an independent country and negotiate for a few hours and flew back with “liberated” accused “Europeans”! How many does the Chadian and other African Presidents know how many Africans are in French jails for faked cases? Ok! To the subject matter – let us ask ourselves- Why didn’t Zoe’s Ark send their humanitarian gesture to many suffering children in the former Soviet Block countries, like Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary and others to mention e few! Why didn’t they follow legal Chadian laws of the land? Even if Zoe’s Ark was exporting “cassava” to Europe, surely they should have followed “Chadian Export ” Laws or procedures! This is a picture depicting how the “21st Century Slavery” is taking shape! Zoe’s Ark should be scrutinized, is it a legal NGO?

Misanga

By: Doris may

Doris may — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:19:13 +0000

I find that people are concerned about children and their welfare, well, as long as they are already born or wanted.
I am concerned about the unwanted.
Who should care about the unwanted?
All of us, none of us?
Maybe we are all unwanted at some stage of our life.
How would I like people to respond when I become unwanted?

By: El Oso, El Moreno, and El Abogado » Blog Archive » Today on Global Voices

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 21:43:41 +0000

[...] Chad: French NGO Adoption Scandal [...]

By: neoyorquina

neoyorquina — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 11:18:00 +0000

I totally agree with New York Punk. Charity should start at home. And isn’t it rich that a French organization is so determined to “rescue” little Africans when they’ve got plenty of Africans already in their country who need a hand?

Also, it’s interesting to note the coverage, or the lack of coverage, of this astonishing story in the U.S. I was waiting for the NYTimes to weigh in with their report and they finally did today with a rather sedate tone that seemed to say “the whole thing is a terrible misunderstanding” and they really didn’t put the screws to Zoe’s Ark. To me it looks like Zoe’s Ark is an unscruplous organization. But the NYTimes story made it sound like it is a well-meaning but naive and inexperienced NGO. Yeah, right.

By: New York Punk

New York Punk — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:41:52 +0000

As noble Zoe’s Ark intentions might be, isn’t it worth noting that this is a PR exercise designed to attract media attention? If Zoe’s Ark mission is to help people, why don’t they start with the ghettos in Paris and suburbs and make it livable for their own citizens first?

Another point worth noting is most parents who signed up for the kids, couldn’t afford the money and had to borrow from their communities – in that case, what better life awaits for those poor children? Living hand-to-mouth in Paris and gawking at the rich?

And Zoe’s Ark has been warned before they undertook this operation by many adopting agencies and still they went ahead with it. I’ll leave with this question – How do you think the French would react if an African charity was caught trying to fly out 100 children from the poorest filthiest part of Paris?