Caz
Last Chance Saloon
Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 836
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 Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 3:33 am Post subject: Trading in Children |
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Posted by Caz: Sun Jan 06, 2008 5:34 am
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20071228/wl_csm/oark_1;_ylt=A0oGku69VIBHeH oBzI0L5gt.;_ylu=X3oDMTE5azlxbGNhBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA3NrMQR2dGlkA0 FVQzAwMV8xBGwDV1Mx
Attempts to remove children from Chad result in accusations of paedophilia and organ trafficking:
| Quote: | Zoe's Ark sentences shock France By Robert Marquand
Fri Dec 28, 3:00 AM ET
Paris - – The news that six French amateur humanitarians convicted of attempting to kidnap 103 children from the African nation of Chad were sentenced to eight years hard labor and $9 million has been received in France with shock mixed with a realism that the group would be punished.
The main question now is whether Chad will extradite the six members of the Zoe's Ark charity back to France, as French authorities have requested.
The case captured world attention when Chadian police arrested 12 Europeans this fall near a local Chad airport – as they prepared to fly the children, supposedly Sudanese orphans from Darfur, to Europe.
Many children later turned out to have parents and to be from villages in neighboring Chad – suggesting the French volunteers may have been duped by local middlemen.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the case played powerfully as an instance of white colonial arrogance; in France, it was seen as a misguided effort to save lives; and among humanitarian groups it has been seen as the kind of mission that puts experienced, professional aid workers at risk.
In Paris, the verdict in Chad after a four-day trial brought condemnation of the Chadian judicial system, and charges of a show trial, by lawyers, family members, and some ordinary French.
"It's a scandalous judicial error," said one of the lawyers for Zoe's Ark, Gilbert Collard, adding that the trial was conducted as a "pretext" by Chadian authorities to suggest that "justice exists in Chad when it doesn't."
"I think Zoe's Ark deserved some punishment, but eight years hard labor is too much," says Tafiq, a Frenchman of Moroccan extraction who works in a Paris cafe. "Nine million dollars and hard labor? That would never happen here."
French bloggers, however, were critical and caustic of the group, many calling them "amateurs."
The group may be extradited to France
Under a 1976 extradition treaty between Chad and France, the six may be extradited to serve their sentence in France, though "hard labor" has been banned in French prisons. A Thursday editorial in the daily Libération suggested the harsh sentence for the Ark members sets up the possibility of extradition, since it answers public outcry in Chad over a case presented luridly in local media as one of former colonialists bent on exploiting African peoples. Before the trial, Chadian President Idriss Deby charged Zoe's Ark with crimes ranging from pedophilia to organ trafficking.
Wednesday's verdict arrived the same day as a new UN report describing higher severe child malnutrition rates in Darfur, despite the presence of some 12,000 aid workers and nearly a billion dollars in assistance. "Acute malnutrition" has risen from 12.9 to 16.1 percent of Darfur children, according to the report.
Eric Breteau, founder of Zoe's Ark, told the court in Chad before his sentence: "I maintain what I've said since the start of this affair – our intention was to fetch orphans from Darfur."
French lawyers complained Thursday to media here that the Chadian trial ignored differing levels of culpability among French defendants, and handed the same sentence to Mr. Breteau as to rank-and-file volunteers.
A misguided effort to save lives?
Breteau, a volunteer fireman from a Paris suburb, got involved in the Darfur cause after attending a symposium on Sudan last year. He formed the Zoe's Ark group shortly after and vowed last spring to save 10,000 children from starving in the war-ravaged area of Sudan.
After Zoe's Ark arrived on the Chadian border, group members say they found it difficult to make good on their promise in a bewildering new atmosphere and began to rely on various proxy agents to find orphans.
In late October Chadian authorities arrested the group on the way to the airport, along with three French journalists, and the pilots and stewardesses of a hired Spanish plane.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy immediately flew to Chad, recovered the journalists and the airplane staff, and promised to bring home the rest of the French members of Zoe's Ark "no matter what they did." At the same time, French human rights minister Rama Yade pointed out that the French volunteers had made mistakes and violated local laws.
While most French expect the six to be extradited, the issue remains a sensitive one, and the French palace has not commented on the verdict.
However, Jean-Louis Bianco, a socialist member of the French Assembly from Provence, home of the Zoe's Ark doctor, Philippe Van Winkelberg, told French media yesterday, "We need to understand the Chadians…. We [the French] will have to pay something for the extradition…. I hope the money will be used to develop Chad." |
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Posted by Caz: Sun Jan 06, 2008 5:39
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3423067.stm
Berlusconi removes orphans from Romania when illegal to do so:
| Quote: | Romania flouts own adoption ban
By Oana Lungescu
BBC European correspondent in Brussels
Romania has admitted it has sent 105 children for adoption in Italy despite its ban on international adoptions.
The ban was introduced in 2001 at the request of the European Union.
British MEP Baroness Emma Nicholson has strongly condemned the incident as a "flagrant breach of the UN Convention of the rights of the child".
The controversy comes at a delicate moment for the Romanian government, which hopes to complete EU entry talks this year and join the bloc in 2007.
Some 800 Romanian orphans were sent abroad since a 2001 ban
Baroness Nicholson, who's championed the cause of children's rights in Romania for years, told the BBC she was gravely worried about what appeared to be a serious breach of the country's international commitments.
She said the children were sent to Italy as a result of an agreement between Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his Romanian counterpart Adrian Nastase.
But Mr Nastase said these were cases where adoption procedures had already begun and the children were despatched to Italy under a special government decision that left no room for corruption.
"There were many families that had special bonds with certain children, they were actually living with them in Romania," he told journalists at a press conference in Bucharest.
Caught in the middle
He said that, since the ban on international adoptions was introduced in 2001, 800 exceptions had been made, compared to 10,000 international adoptions in the previous period.
Romania is caught in the middle, between foreign governments exerting strong pressures for adoptions to be resumed - and the EU, which wants the ban to stay
Romanian PM Adrian Nastase
The US pressurised Romania to lift the ban as a condition to its admission to Nato two years ago, and other countries, like Italy, Spain and France, have also lobbied hard for adoptions to resume.
Mr Nastase said Romania was caught in the middle, between foreign governments exerting strong pressures for adoptions to be resumed - and the EU, which wants the ban to stay until Romania introduces tough new controls to prevent the trafficking of children.
No-one denies that the situation has vastly improved since the fall of communism 15 years ago, when tens of thousands of children filled Romanian orphanages.
But Emma Nicholson, who is drafting a report for the European Parliament on Romania's preparedness for the EU, said they could make no compromise on human rights.
Suspension call
And the Dutch MEP Arie Oostlander has called for the suspension of entry talks with Romania until it improves its human rights record and tackles widespread corruption.
"Negotiating all those technicalities about the economy, fisheries, energy and the environment makes no sense if Romania is not really developing into a democratic state respecting the rule of law," he said.
The European Parliament will make its recommendation on Romania next month, but entry negotiations can only be suspended by EU governments on a recommendation by the European Commission.
Commission officials say they are investigating the case, which they consider as serious, as well as helping Romania to reform its adoption laws.
"But we are not sure that the momentum would continue if we suspended the talks," one official said. |
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Posted by Caz on Sun Jan 06, 2008 5:50 am
Studies on children in orphanages requires them to stay in institutions until research complete:
http://www.med.yale.edu/chldstdy/icmh/adoption.html
| Quote: | The International Adoption Project originated from a series of discussions with colleagues at the CSC and is aimed at understanding the consequences of institutional rearing on child mental health and development.
The project will involve several stages and includes a detailed assessment of psychosocial and motor development, attachment and behavior problems with further follow-up of 150 children from three orphanages in Arkhangelsk, Russia, aged 1 to 4 years, and age-matched control groups raised by their biological parents in the same area.
Collaborations are anticipated with Drs. Charles Zeanah and Anna Smyke (Tulane University), who are conducting a similar project in orphanages in Romania; Dr. Robert McCall (University of Pittsburgh), who is organizing a longitudinal study assessing the effects of early intervention provided in orphanages (St. Petersbourg, Russia) for future psychosocial functioning of children after adoption in the US; and Dr. Arthur Eidelman (Israel), who is organizing a follow up of children from Romania and Russia, adopted in Israel.
Another part of the project will involve the assessment of language development in relation to psychosocial factors in children from Russian Children Homes in comparison to children adopted in the US from Russia and controls from Russia and the US. Drs. Vladislav Ruchkin, Elena Grigorenko and Linda Mayes will coordinate these projects. On the Russian side the projects will be organized and coordinated by Dr. Roman Koposov and his colleagues. Dr. Koposov and Dr. Ruchkin recently completed a preliminary study of children from one of the orphanages that provided data on the validity of several measures to be used in future studies. |
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Posted by Caz: Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 11:20 am
More on the trading of children:
http://www.nobodyschildren.org/Orphans%20of%20our%20Discontent%201.htm
| Quote: | In November 2004, a new scandal involving a nine-year-old boy who had been adopted from a Romanian orphanage by an American citizen broke out, outraging the international media.
37-year old William D. Peckenpaugh from Marion County, Oregon, was accused of years-long sexual abuse of his son, after a sexually graphic video was found in a camera which had been returned to an electronics store. Peckenpaugh, who had completed the adoption in 2001 when the boy was six years old, was arraigned on six counts of first-degree sodomy, two counts of first-degree sexual abuse and for using a child in the display of sexually explicit conduct.
The 9-year-old boy was placed in the custody of the Department of Human Services and remained in a foster home in Oregon.
In December 2005, Peckenpaugh pleaded guilty to all 33 charges and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Another sad story caught the media and governments' attention in 2005, when a Romanian-born girl, Alexandra Austin, recounted how the Canadian couple who had adopted her in 1991, when she was nine years old, sent her back to Romania after only five months because they had adopted another baby from Romania and no longer wanted Alexandra.
Austin, now 23, told the media how she had been stateless for the past 14 years as the Romanian authorities had refused to recognize her as a Romanian, while Ottawa said she did not have Canadian citizenship either. And because her identity was not clear, Austin was denied medical care or education, leaving her with only a Grade 3 educational level. "Nobody should ever do this to a child. I've lost my childhood and my identity", Austin told the media. |
Roelie Post talks about International Adoption
By Ashleigh Elson
http://familypreservation.blogspot.com/2007/11/roelie-post-talks-about -international.html
| Quote: |
Roelie Post holds a baby in a Romanian baby home that housed 300 infants. The home has scince been closed down with EU funding and the children were re-integrated into their own families, placed in foster care, or adopted by Romanian families. So, what rights do children caught up in crisis situations have? We asked Roelie Post. Post worked for the European Commission on the reform of Romania's child protection for many years and is the author of Romania: For Export Only.
Post wasn't surprised to hear about the Zoe's Ark situation and compared it with the international adoptions that happened during the tsunami crisis in 2005. She says children should be helped in their own country."
Many people believe that Zoe's Ark has the best of intentions, but Post says she's heard this argument before:
"NGOs create this wrong image of children in poor countries, saying that they are abandoned orphans and that they need to be rescued. Most of the children - including in Darfur - have at least one parent, have extended family, and are part of a community. They are not orphans, they are not abandoned and therefore they should not be rescued."
According to Post, there aren't actually many true orphans. In cases where war and HIV/AIDS have left children without parents, the children are usually looked after by relatives and by their community.
"This is where the support should go - to helping local communities look after the real orphans. And not what a lot of NGOs are doing, setting up orphanages and taking children out of their communities and villages. That makes children vulnerable, it isn't a good way to live. And from there often comes the suggestion that children would be better off in another country in a nice family. But experience worldwide has shown - and the international community has always agreed - that children are best off in their own surroundings."
Post says, based on her experience in Romania with people who were involved with international adoption, she's not optimistic that the Zoe's Ark people are as naive as they might seem.
"One must not forget that there is an enormous demand for children in the western world by people who want to adopt. And this market is demand-driven… One should really wonder if this is the right way to go and how far people are innocent." |
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