Kidnapped Children to be Returned to their Families

By Christopher Gehrke
Impunity Watch Senior Desk Officer, South America

N’DJAMENA, Chad – One hundred and three children will be reunited with their families after six French charity workers were convicted of attempting to kidnap to kidnap them.

Chadian authorities arrested the aid workers as they tried to leave Chad on a plane bound for Paris, said the United Nations Children’s Fund.

The charity said that the children were Sudanese orphans from the Darfur region, and were being taken to foster families in France.  Other charities, however, had determined that the majority of the children were Chadian, and had living parents.

The children – 21 girls and 82 boys, aged between one and 10 years – have been in an orphanage in Abeche since late October.  The children indicated that they were from villages near Adre and Tine along the Chadian-Sudanese border.

Chadians expressed their outrage by staging a stone-throwing, anti-French demonstration in the capital, N’Djamena, a few months ago.

French authorities called the charity group’s actions “illegal and irresponsible.”  The six aid workers were sentenced to eight years of hard labor in Chad.  They were sent to France, with the permission of the Chadian government, after French President Nicolas Sarkozy intervened on their behalf.  The six were sentenced to eight years in a French prison.

The children’s return home has been delayed until their guardians could be identified by Chadian officials.  The French charity involved left little paperwork about their children’s identities.  Despite this setback, UNICEF spokesman Jean-Francois Basse said most of the children’s guardians had been found.

“Out of the 103 children we were able to locate those who were in charge of the children for 97 of them,” he told BBC. UNICEF will travel to Chad next week to reunite the children with their families. 

For more information, please see:

France24 – Children in Chad ‘kidnap’ scandal to rejoin families:  UNICEF – 7 March 2008

CNN – Kidnapped kids going back to families – 7 March 2008

BBC News – Chad’s ‘orphans’ returning home – 7 March 2008

BRIEF: CNMI Seeks Alternative to S. 2483

SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands – Members of both the Saipan Chamber of Commerce and the Hotel Association of Northern Mariana Islands (HANMI) told Governor Benigno Fitial that CNMI must find its own solutions to immigration and minimum wage issues, and not cave to pressure from Washington.  The CNMI economy depends heavily on foreign workers and tourism, and S. 2483 would federalize CNMI’s immigration policies, which have been dealt with locally since CNMI became a United States dependent territory.

Jim Arenovski, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, said, “We need to be able to rely on our own organizations to go out there and tell them about the state of our economy.  We need to be able to go out there and meet with the folks in the committees that have jurisdictions over us.”  [Note: CNMI does not currently have a delegate to the United States federal government, an anomaly among the dependent territories.]  Arenovski believes that S.2483 was drafted to solve problems that no longer exist in CNMI.  “Our economy is completely different,” he said, “it no longer stands on two legs, it stands on one leg and that’s tourism.  We need to come up with some solutions.”

HANMI chairwoman Lynn Knight enumerated four reasons S.2483 is inappropriate for CNMI: it will cause population decline because of its cap on foreign workers, it does not provide a long-term solution for the CNMI workforce, the H-visa system is too inflexible to work for CNMI, and the tourist waiver would be inadequate for CNMI to maintain its current markets.

For more information, please see:

Marianas Variety – Fitial: NMI may lose foreign workers by 2013 if federalization bill becomes law – 06 March 2008

Saipan Tribune – ‘4 reasons why S.2483 won’t work for us’ – 06 March 2008

Saipan Tribune – ‘NMI must have a plan, alternative to S.2483’ – 09 March 2008

BRIEF: Observers Fear Fiji Elections Will Be Delayed

SUVA, Fiji – Observers are concerned that actions taken by the current regime indicate an unwillingness to remain committed to holding democratic elections in March 2009.  Additionally, Public Service Chairman Rishi Ram has announced that the appointment of a supervisor of elections will be delayed by two months.  There appears to be a lack of interest in the position, and those who have applied have been of “low calibre” the Fiji Times reports.

United States senior government official Glynn Davies was unimpress

BRIEF: Libya Blocks UN Condemnation

GENEVA, Switzerland – For the second time in two months, the UN Security Council was unable to agree on a statement condemning violence and unrest in the Middle East.  On March 6, the US prepared a statement, which carries less weight than a formal resolution, condemning a day of violence that included an attack at a seminary in Jerusalem.

Libya opposed the statement, believing that it should be more balanced and that it should also condemn Israel’s recent operation in Gaza.  Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Ibrahim Dabbashi, said the attack on the school was no different than Israeli military offensives against militants in Gaza.  He said that “when we have to condemn the killing of the Israeli civilians, we also have to look at what’s happening in Gaza.”

Israel stated that no comparison could be made between the two events.  Dan Gillerman, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nation, said that the attack on the seminary was not an act of retaliation, but rather “these people have been terrorizing Israel for years, have been carrying out suicide bombings and indiscriminate attacks for years.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Arye Merkel, echoed Gillerman’s statement, by saying that there’s a major difference between the attack on the seminary and Israel’s operation in Gaza. He said, “We attack terrorists and unfortunately in a situation of war it happens that some civilians are also hurt. They attacked civilians only.  Today it was a school, the other day it was a hospital, and then another school.”

For more information, please see:
The Associate Press – Libya Blocks UN from Condemning Violence – 7 March 2008

CNN – Libya Blocks UN Condemnation of Jerusalem Seminary Attack – 7 March 2008

BRIEF: Rwanda Signs Agreement with UN to House Prisoners

KIGALI, Rwanda –  Rwanda can now jail persons convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

Rwanda signed an agreement with the UN on the enforcement of sentences imposed by the ICTR with the United Nations. Rwanda joins six other countries, Mali, Benin, Swaziland, France, Italy and Sweden, which have already signed such an agreement.

The ICTR Statute sets forth requirements for prisons that a nation must satisfy before it can agree to house criminals convicted by the ICTR. Rwanda built a prison in Mpanga which meets these criteria.

In response to the possibility of being transferred to prison in Rwanda, 40 of about 70 detainees who have been convicted by the ICTR voiced their concern about possible mistreatment or abuse. The 40 detainees signed a letter sent to the president of the ICTR stating that they would call on international organizations to hold the U.N. and the ICTR responsible for ensuring that they are not mistreated in a Rwandan prison if they are sent there against their will.

For more information, please see:

allAfrica.com – Rwanda: Country Becomes the 7th to Sign UN Agreement – 7 March 2008

ICTR – Rwanda signs Agreement on Enforcement of ICTR Sentences – 5 March 2008