Aid workers are planning to travel to Chad’s western border with Sudan to try to determine the exact background of 103 children at the centre of a child abduction row, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said on Friday.
The group is aiming to meet village and community leaders around the Chadian towns of Adre and Tine to shed light on their nationality and family situation, said Miranda Eeles, a spokesperson for Unicef.
”The plan next week is to determine exactly where these children are from,” she told journalists.
”At the moment we’re not entirely sure if they’re Chadian or Sudanese. Most of them are from those locations around Adre and Tine, which is very much on the border,” she added.
Chad’s security forces have arrested 19 people since a small French charity, Zoe’s Ark, attempted to fly the children to France, believing they were orphans from the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur across the desert border.
Nine French nationals — six members of the charity and three journalists — face a forced-labour sentence on charges of kidnapping and extortion.
Seven Spanish flight crew, a Belgian pilot and two Chadians also face charges.
On Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Unicef and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said 91 of the children had spoken of having close relatives.
ICRC spokesperson Anna Schaaf said they could not be considered orphans.
Eeles said on Friday that the children would stay in the orphanage in Abeche where they are being cared for while the judicial process is going on.
The border is a porous area that has for years seen an influx of hundreds of thousands of Darfur refugees as well as a Chadian rebel insurgency and ethnic strife, with people from each country living either side, she said.
The ICRC said it had visited the 19 detained Europeans, and they had been able to send messages to their families.
The detained charity workers have rejected any suggestion of a kidnap operation, saying they had acted in good faith, believing they were saving Darfuri children from certain death. — Sapa-AFP