Association Algérienne Enfance et Familles d'Acceuil Bénévoles (AAEFAB), Algeria

The Association for Child and Volunteer Foster Families (AEFAB) was founded in 1985 with the object of giving a family to every child deprived of a normal family. Four objectives were laid down in order to prevent abandonment of the child by its biological mother and to encourage adoption:

To help distressed mothers in vulnerable situations: 30% of the children who have passed through our two nurseries have been reunited within five to eight months with their biological mother;
To take care of children immediately after their abandonment. We have built two nurseries of 42-bed capacity and have received and placed over 900 children in families.
To improve the social environment around the abandoned children and to encourage and support those families wanting to adopt;
To improve the legal protection of the abandoned child, the mother and the foster families.

This last objective is certainly our most important contribution towards the protection of the abandoned child in the Moslem world and is the reason the "We the People" Awards Program chose AEFAB as an exemplary group.

Adoption is prohibited by Islam. The substitute process for safeguarding a child deprived of a family is kafala, which is defined in Algerian Family Law as "Kafala, or legal fostering, is the promise to undertake without payment the upkeep, education and protection of a minor, in the same way as a father would do for his son".

In Moslem countries based on Koranic law, kafala is implemented on an orthodox or fundamentalist interpretation, which sees in the prohibition of adoption and family relationship, the protection of the sacred patrilineal and inheritance laws which govern the organisation of the family and perpetuate it through its estate. The interdiction of the use of the (foster) father's name is a means whereby the social order establishes the culpability of the original "sin" and the child is excluded from the rights of succession.

Since its foundation, AEFAB has insisted on presenting clearly to the religious authorities an essential complement to the kafala: the problem of concordance of name between the foster father (kafil) and the foster child (makful), while at the same time scrupulously respecting the essence of Koranic teaching.

After three years of exchanges of information, a favourable opinion for the concordance of name without relationship was expressed and transmitted to us by the Algerian Islamic Superior Council (ISC) in September, 1991. This was the subject of a decree published in January, 1992.

This legislative development has even greater value since, in the light of Koranic law and with the favourable opinion of the ISC, it creates a precedent for all Moslem countries.