FRANCAISSOS Enfants sans frontières - History
1980-1989
-1985, Lebanon: with the approval of François Mitterrand’s wife, the agreement of the French minister of Defence Charles Hernu and the support of the Lebanese president Amine Gemayel, who secures the crossing of the front line towards the Achrafieh neighbourhood in Beirut, SOS-ESF takes out, under bombings, 25 wounded children, including 12 Christians and 13 Muslims, each one with a member of their family. They are flown in a helicopter to the French Navy corvette Georges Leygues, lying at anchor off the Lebanese coast, then sent to Paris to be treated.
-1985-1989, Ethiopia: unlike MSF, expelled from the country, SOS-ESF does not inform against the abuses of colonel Mengistu Hailé Mariam’s junta, nor the forced displacement of population to the south. It is true that the organisation does not witness those transfers as it runs a maternal and children protection programme in the Afar territory, where the Ethiopian army does not burnt villages.
