Today Linda Polgreen writes a truly sublime commentary on the French NGO that last week tried to leave Chad with 103 ‘orphans’.
Polgreen begins with the tale of Belgium’s King Leopold who, not finding any orphans in his Congolese colony (the concept is in some sense unknown in the dense kin networks of most African peoples) instructed his men to form ‘orphanages’ and kidnap young boys into them, to eventually become soldiers in his vast native army.
The NGO, Zoé’s Ark, who travelled to Chad to find desperate and vulnerable orphans to save and bring to France, seems to have encountered the same ‘problem’ as Leopold. Most orphans were living with family members and had little desire to leave. Determined not to fail in their righteous cause, the NGO apparently lured the children away with promises of sweets and schooling.
Polgreen thoughtfully points out that “the current episode has a particular sting because Europe has been writing increasingly stringent rules to keep Africans from migrating there.”
“What message is the transaction sending?” demanded an editorial in the African Executive, an online business magazine. “Will Zoé’s Ark transport the 201 million Africans facing extreme hunger to Europe? Africa must vehemently resist this humiliation. If Zoé’s Ark is serious on the African plight, let it press Europe to open its borders to African migrants, grant African professionals jobs without discrimination, drop its barriers against African goods and allow Africa to export finished products.”
My wife and I have seen it most plainly in our work with former child soldiers. While most of these youth are tremendously resilient, the aid community has found it tremendously persuasive and lucrative to promote their supposed danger and distress. The greatest tragedy is that such erroneous advocacy finds its way back into humanitarian policy, and colors what we spend and who we target.
As Polgreen points out, how very different is our view of and attitude to the African adult.
5 Responses
May 7th, 2008
Dear Chris Blattman,
Would you be willing to help out a high school student who is very interested in the topic of orphans in Africa. In particular, I’m looking for a subject expert who would take about 10 minutes to answer any or all of the following questions on this topic. But, instead of writing the answers, you would simply have to “speak your answers†or record your answers on the phone – you could even do it using your cell phone! I am currently creating a blog http://continentoforphans.blogspot.com/ and I’m working on creating a podcast on this topic. I really want other people – students my age, as well as adults – to know real facts about this topic and that is why I am asking that you “record†your answers via the phone. I will take your recorded information, add an intro and closing to it, and turn it into a podcast interview for others to hear via my blog.
Answering the questions should only take about 10 minutes of your time. If you agree to do this, I’d email you the toll-free phone number and two codes to punch in. You would then record your answers, and that’s it! The recording is saved and I would take it from there and produce it.
Here are a list of questions that I really want an expert’s view on. You could answer any or all – depending on what you have time for.
10 Questions to ask in the interview:
1. First of all can you tell us a little about your expertise on the issue of Orphans in Africa.
2. Can you please define for us the problem in Africa that has to deal with all the Orphans.
3. What are some causes of this problem? Why are there so many Orphans?
4. What is being done to help these children and stop this problem?
5. What is the best tactic and the worst tactic?
6. Do you have any stories about children that have been orphaned?
7. What is being done by government officials to stop this problem?
8. What can the typical person do for these orphans?
9. Do you have any advice on how to spread awareness of this issue to people who don’t realize the problem.
10. How long do you think this is going to be a big problem for. Is there hope for the future?
If you would like to participate, please email me as soon as possible. I will then give you the quick and simple instructions for recording your answers using your phone and a toll-free number.
I look forward to hearing from you. I hope you can help me make an impact in raising awareness in this area.
Best wishes –
Marlo
A Member of a High School Web 2.0 Technologies Class
Denver, Colorado
Chris,
I agree with you that there are very different concepts of orphans. And obviously whatever Zoe’s Ark was doing is ludicrous, it’s so extreme its almost hard to believe.
I think across both culture we should be rightly suspicious of adoption if it is not desired by either the child of the parent.
What pains me is a columnist using the story of Zoe’s Ark to generalize about how we should think about orphans and about adoption. It’s like making generalizations about American culture by studying a few serial killers.
A lot of kids in orphanages have no support system. A lot of kids in orphanages were left there by extended families who did not have the resources to care of them. I don’t think Zoe’s Ark or even the African concept of community tells us so much about how we should think about Westerners wanting to adopt these kids.
i agree with you that what this NGO was doing is totally unacceptable. latest news show that they were putting bandages to the kids to simulate they were war casualties…
While it’s impossible to generalize, the concept of orphaning is very different than ours in many African cultures.
If we take northern Uganda as an example, one is not orphaned so long as one has uncles, grandmothers, brothers, and so forth. The idea that a state or non-state organization should care for a child should his or her parents die is a very foreign and odd concept, even offensive to some. Only in cities, where the social fabric is thinner or kin are not around, do we see serious growth in orphanages.
A reason that adoption is not always well-accepted is also that the idea that a child would lose his affiliation and obligations to his extended family upon adoption, and that the new parents would be sole legal guardians, is also at odds with custom. Thus our conceptions of adoption clash.
Children are frequently ‘adopted’ temporarily or permanently by extended family members who have the income to support the child through school, even when the parent is alive. But that child does not give up his toes or obligations to the original family.
Even many children in orphanages have parents, but those parents have temporarily left those children in the orphanages care in the hopes they will get school or health support. Exactly how common this is I can’t say, but in East Africa my sense is, very.
What a strange story on so many levels. There is certainly no shortage of orphans and orphanages in Africa.
And are orphans not orphans in the absence of orphanages? So if the state will not or cannot create orphanages in the chaos of Darfur, are there no orphans?
It’s not clear to me why we should conclude that the absence of orphanages in some regions is because of the strong social fabric of those communities, as opposed to, say, the failure of the state to create other options. We might find those broader communities happy to put orphans into orphanages if they only had the opportunity.
And why do the same development experts who argue that opening rich countries to migration is the best thing we could do for Africa, also cluck their tongues at Westerners who want to adopt children from African orphanages?
Instead of stopping at “African countries have a strong unease with adoption”, we should wonder why. It’s certainly not to protect the children – I’m sure you’ve seen some of these state run orphanages. And why aren’t the people advocating migration also advocating easing the bureaucracy around international adoption? Obviously the benefits are on a smaller scale, but to the individual they are the same.