French Arrested for Kidnapping
October 30,2007
Anyone who has ever adopted a child, or knows someone who has adopted, from overseas will tell you they were completely snowed under with paperwork and interviews. The typical year to year and a half process is arduous. It's not easy to bring a child across international borders. Governments have set up strict rules about adoption to make it so. And with good reason! They want to prevent child trafficking and abuse.
It seems tremendously naïve for these French aid workers to think they could fly out more than 100 kids with no paperwork and not get in trouble. The aid workers also made promises about adoption to French families they had no business making. Did they really expect the French government to open the doors of their country wide to let in a plane load of illegal immigrants, breaking several international laws?
The U.N. strongly states that children of refugees should not be adopted while a conflict is still raging. There are usually a lot of kids who are not orphans, just temporarily separated from their families. Yes. They lead tragically horrible lives in refugee camps, but what happens after the war is that most of the time refugees return home. Families are reunited. To take a child out of a refugee camp means their parents may never be able to find them.
With all of this said, you may find what I am about to write a bit of a paradox AND know that I am in no way justifying what these aid workers did. It was illegal and they broke several laws. However, knowing the incredible pressure and heartbreak that it is to see suffering first hand, I can understand WHY they would want to "rescue" these children. Were their hearts in the right place? Sounds like it. But their solution to the problem was absolutely wrong.
The bottom line is the men, women and children of Darfur need our prayers and support. A real, lasting peace MUST be reached.
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