France/Madagascar: Adoptions issue soon to be settled

MADAGASCAR

DIPLOMACY

n°1131 - 16/04/2005

Adoptions issue soon to be settled

The government of Prime Minister Jacques Sylla has set a priority in settling the question of adoptions by French families of around 150 Madagascan children before President Jacques Chirac comes to Antananarivo for the summit of the Commission de l'Océan Indien (COI), in July this year. These applications for adoption were frozen in August 2004 by the Malagasy administration which was keen to draft a new bill on the matter after having broken up a child trafficking network. During his recent meeting in Antananarivo with the French Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Renaud Muselier, Sylla promised to settle the adoption cases within three months. However, the cases in question have to go through four different ministries before getting Sylla's approval, which has already been granted, and finally that of President Marc Ravalomanana. This should not pose a problem with three of the ministries (justice, foreign affairs, interior). However, the French families waiting for their applications for adoption to be approved have found the bottleneck is with the ministry of population, social protection and leisure, whose minister is M. Zafilaza. These families informed Muselier of the issue, who mentioned the matter to Sylla and also to the French ambassador to Antananarivo Catherine Boivineau. In Muselier's office, it is a technical advisor of Madagascan origin, Irchad Ramiandrasoa Razaaly, who is in charge of this delicate matter and who is in regular contact with the French prospective adoption families. Joking about this situation, Muselier declared during a reception at the French embassy in Antananarivo, that he had ?adopted a Madagascan? to handle the issue. Irchad Razaaly, who has studied law at Antananarivo University, still has many friends in Antananarivo, one of which is Barijaona aka Bary-Ramaholimiaso who is one of the directors of BNI-CL, and Dominique Rakotomalala of the Fondation Friedrich Ebert.