Zoe’s Ark Sudan/Chad/France Debacle

This 2007 case involving the attempt to move supposedly-orphaned children advertised as coming from Darfur but really from Chad to France for adoption was prosecuted in France finally. This month, members of this “charity” L’Arche de Zoe (Zoe’s Ark) were found guilty. The two head members received 2 year sentences and fines and the other four members received suspended sentences. They were the Laura Silsbys of their time.

Background

“The group was formed by motoring enthusiasts from the French four-wheel-drive community to aid victims of the December 2004 Asian tsunami.

Its founder, Eric Breteau, is a volunteer firefighter and former president of the French 4×4 Federation.

Zoe’s Ark says it is motivated by the firefighter’s spirit and sense of duty, as well as the catchphrase “courage and devotion”.

The group, which describes itself as a non-profit organisation “dedicated to orphaned children”, is now focusing its activities on children caught in the four-and-a-half year war in Sudan’s Darfur region.

‘Evacuation campaign’

In April, Zoe’s Ark announced a campaign to evacuate 10,000 orphans from Darfur alongside other French charities including Sauver le Darfour (Save Darfur).

It said it wanted to place orphaned Darfuri children aged under five in foster care with French families, invoking its right to do so under international law.

But the charity has been accused of child trafficking in the case of the 103 children it attempted to fly out of Chad.

UN officials say many of the children are from Chad, not Sudan, and there is no evidence that they are orphans.

Zoe’s Ark insists tribal leaders in Sudan told them all the children were Darfuri orphans. It says it wanted to save the children’s lives and was carrying out a medical evacuation – not an adoption operation.

And it has proudly stated that its operations did not have official support.

On its website, the group says its plans will “surely expose [us] to the wrath of Khartoum, of certain politicians… who will cry scandal, speaking of ethics, illegality or the psychological traumas of uprooted children”.

Police investigation

French Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights Rama Yade has accused the group of hiding its identity by registering in Chad under the name of Children Rescue. Mr Breteau heads both organisations.

Ms Yade says the government warned Zoe’s Ark months ago that it risked breaking the law. She told Chadian officials of the group’s plans back in July.

French police have been investigating the charity since then, and Mr Breteau was questioned by police in August about suspected plans to adopt children from Darfur.

Other aid and adoption groups have criticised the group’s plans as “irresponsible” and amateurish.”

Profile: Zoe’s Ark

[BBC 10/29/07]

Children Reunified After 5 Months

“Last Friday morning, after five months spent in an orphanage in eastern Chad, 83 of 103 children known to the world as the ‘Zoe’s Ark orphans’ began their journey home. Most of the remaining 20 children are expected to be reunited with their families this week.

The children had been caught up in a charity adoption scandal that rocked the Central African nation last year, when the French non-governmental organization Zoe’s Ark attempted to fly them out of Chad to France. The children were reportedly separated from their families under false pretenses.

During a ceremony held at the orphanage in Abeche, UNICEF Representative in Chad Mariam Coulibaly Ndiaye expressed gratitude for the safe return of the children. Chad’s Minister of Social Affairs, Carmel Ngarbatinan, thanked the partners who have worked with her ministry on the children’s behalf.

UNICEF, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Food Programme, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Chadian Red Cross and Save the Children UK have all supported the government’s efforts.

Keeping families intact

UNICEF staff accompanied the children on their bus ride back to the town of Adre. Trucks carrying toys and bicycles, as well as bedding and clothing to be given to their families, also made the trip.

Upon their arrival in Adre, the children’s families welcomed them with open arms and tears of joy. To help these and thousands of other families remain intact, international donors – including the Governments of Spain and Japan, the Dubai Cares partnership and the French National Committee for UNICEF – have pledged financial support for an integrated child nutrition, education and protection programme in the region.

Reuniting the Zoe’s Ark children with their families “is an important step for us, but not the final one,” noted UNICEF Protection Officer Jean Francois Basse. “I would say the real challenge has just begun.”

UNICEF Chad [3/19/08]

December 2012-Trial in France Begins

“In 2007, with war raging in Darfur, they realised that the orphans left stranded by the conflict would need a new home. They also realised that there were plenty of French families who wanted to adopt, but were struggling due to France’s complicated adoption system. So they hired a plane, flew to Chad and rounded up some orphans from a refugee camp near the Sudanese border, the costs covered by the cash advances paid by eager potential parents.

This is where the problems began. Before the plane could return to France, the Zoe’s Ark crew were arrested by unhappy Chadian authorities, who quite rightly pointed out that the NGO should have complied with Chad’s own adoption laws. Also, the Chadians noted, most of these Sudanese orphans were neither orphans nor were they from Sudan; they were local kids lured in by Zoe’s Ark’s false promises of a trip to the clinic or a better school (this was subsequently confirmed by UN agencies and the Red Cross). Blinded by their ignorance, moral righteousness and end-justifies-the-means mentality, Zoe’s Ark was only just prevented from kidnapping dozens of children, all in the name of doing good.

They didn’t escape unpunished. A court in Chad sentenced members of the group to eight years in prison, and ordered them to pay €6.3 million in damages to parents of the children. Shortly afterwards, they were transferred home and pardoned by Chad’s president, Idriss Deby, probably thanks to extreme diplomatic pressure from France. The damages have yet to be paid.

This was not the end of the affair. In France, 103 expectant parents, all of whom had forked out between R25,000 and R50,000 (about £1,750 to £3,500) to Zoe’s Ark, did not receive the little Sudanese orphan that had been promised them. This amounts to fraud, some claimed, and French authorities launched an investigation. On Monday in Paris the trial began of six members of the NGO, who have been charged with illegal involvement in adoption procedures, attempting to bring minors into the country illegally, and fraud. With its sensational, noxious mix of international intrigue and naïve idealism, the trial is receiving huge attention in France.

Not present at their own trial, or to bear witness to all the controversy generated by their actions, are two key figures in Zoe’s Ark: chairman Éric Breteau and his partner Émilie Lelouche. Instead, they’re living in Cape Town, where they are attempting to restart their lives. According to Le Figaro, Breteau has given up his ideals, instead running a guesthouse and obtaining his pilot’s licence, while Lelouche founded a performance group called the Compagnie Kalahari. The Daily Maverick attempted to contact the pair for comment, but Emilie Lelouche did not answer her cellphone, and has told other media that she is not speaking to anyone about the issue. South Africa is a safe place for them to be: according to the Department of Justice, there is no extradition treaty in force between South Africa and France.

In Paris, meanwhile, the trial continues without them, and their former colleagues don’t appear to be very pleased to be left in the lurch. “Breteau is an idealist, ready put everyone in the merde,” said Jean-François Tavira, recruited by Zoe’s Ark to pilot the plane, while the presiding judge described the pair’s absence as an act of “grand cowardice”.
Cowardice it may be, but it’s easy to understand why Breteau and Lelouche might not be so eager to show their faces in public. The line between idealism and idiocy is very fine, and their misguided Zoe’s Ark project was about as far on the wrong side of that line as it’s possible to be.”

French charity’s plan to rescue Darfur ‘orphans’ may be worst aid idea ever

[The Guardian 12/5/12 by Simon Allison]

February 2013

“The head of Zoe’s Ark, Eric Breteau, and his partner and co-worker Emilie Lelouch, were found guilty of fraud, illegally brokering adoption and of attempting to bring foreign minors into the country in 2007.

“[They] couldn’t possibly be ignorant of the illegal nature of their work,” the court heard. The defendants were also accused of lying to the children’s families.

The couple were fined a toal of €100,000 (£85,000) and barred from any activity related to the placement or accommodation of minors.

The charity itself received a €100,000 fine and four other charity workers – Philippe van Winkelberg, Christophe Letien, Alain Peligat and Marie-Agnes Peleran – were given suspended sentences ranging from six months to a year.

The defendants were arrested by Chadian authorities in 2007 as they were about to fly 81 boys and 22 girls to France where some 358 families had paid to adopt them in the false belief that the children were refugees from Sudan.

Zoe’s Ark claimed the children were orphans from wartorn Darfur but in reality most of the children were not orphans and came from Chad.

Sentenced to eight years’ hard labour by a court in Chad’s capital of N’Djamena, the charity workers were later freed on a presidential pardon in 2008.” [You have to love the PAP to child ratio too. Triple the PAPs = triple the ]

Zoe’s Ark African Adoption Scandal: Eric Breteau and Emilie Lelouch Jailed

[International Business Times 2/12/13 by Umberto Bacchi]

Commentary-“Do-It-Yourself Humanitarianism”

“Zoe’s Ark is not the first supposedly well-intentioned aid project to get it wrong.

Kony 2012 – a campaign to raise awareness about Uganda’s Lord Resistance Army commander Josephy Kony, caused a massive stir online last year. Tens of millions watched the video but it did not take long to draw criticism, including from many Ugandans. It was accused of being innacurate and too simplistic and worst of all for its producers; self-serving.

Another example was the One Million Shirts for Africa project, a scheme that wanted to donate second-hand clothes. But a shortage of t-shirts is not a problem in Africa, especially in a continent where they are made cheaply for export.

There was also the shoe brand TOMS, who have donated more than a million pairs of shoes to developing countries. Critics say they send shoes where people may already be employed to make them, and their campaign does not combat the root cause of ‘shoelessness’, which is poverty.

So, how dangerous is this so-called do-it-yourself humanitarianism? Was the Zoe’s Ark campaign to evacuate children from Darfur a case of humanitarian goodwill gone wrong, or a more sinister cover for child trafficking?

“The greed is not proved. These people didn’t have a criminal record before, but one of the things they felt themselves as gods they are going to help … so it’s really more megalomania. So how do you sentence megalomania? … No children have been harmed, nobody has been deprived from his parents. The crime, maybe there was an intention, but the crime was not actually committed. [Well 103 children were separated from their parents and 358 PAPs were defrauded so I have to beg to differ on that…]

“Some kind of regulation should be taken so that there is a kind of minimum check of who wants to raise generosity money in the public.”

– Renaud Girard, the chief foreign correspondent for Le Figaro”

Zoe’s Ark: Charity or child trafficking?

[Al Jazeera 2/14/13]

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