(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-07 09:39

BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo -- Central Africa's Republic of Congo lifted a ban on foreign adoptions Thursday, three months after it was instituted amid an uproar over attempts by a French charity to fly a planeload of children out of Chad.

The Justice Ministry said in a statement that it had taken steps to "avoid anarchy" in the international adoption process.

Republic of Congo - the smaller western neighbor of Congo - blocked all adoptions by foreigners on Oct. 31 in the wake of an incident in Chad over the attempted removal of about 100 children by a French charity that claimed the children were orphans from Darfur, the war-ravaged Sudanese region across Chad's eastern border.

Government officials had called the ban a "preventive measure" to make sure they were adequately overseeing adoptions by foreigners in their country, and to investigate the circumstances of any recent adoptions.

"International adoptions of Congolese children will no longer take place in a sort of anarchy as in the past, when many children were adopted illegally without the knowledge of their legitimate, biological parents," said Cyrille Louya, a spokesman for the ministry of justice and human rights.

The Chad incident, involving a little known French group called Zoe's Ark, had focused attention on the possibility African children were being taken abroad by sex or labor traffickers because of poor policing of international adoptions. The apparent assumption that the children would be better off in Europe than with their families also has drew criticism.

The Zoe's Ark workers were convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to eight years in jail with hard labor by a Chadian court in December. The sentence was commuted to eight years in jail - France has no hard labor provisions - when they were transferred to France under a judicial agreement.