The children at the center of the global scandal involving French Organization Zoe’s Ark are not orphans, according to the United Nations.

Virtually all of the children a French aid group tried to fly out of Chad had been living with family members in villages and were not orphans of the Darfur conflict, as the group claimed, the United Nations said Thursday.

That finding was based on interviews with some of the 103 children as the government and aid groups tried to figure out where they came from and how to reunite them with their families.

“These were not orphans in the desert,” said Annette Rehrl, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency. “They were living with their families.”

Zoe’s Ark was attempting to move 103 children from Chad out of the country to be put up for adoptions in France. The organization was claiming that they were saving the children from a life of hardship.

A French aid organization, L’Arche de Zoé, or Zoé’s Ark, had claimed that the children were sick, hungry and abandoned, and had raised money from European families to rescue the children and place them temporarily in French homes. But checkups showed the children to be in good condition, Rehrl said.

Although questions were raised before the “evacuation” took place, families were waiting at the airports to receive what they believed to be were children in dire need of help.

According to its Web site, Zoe’s Ark, founded in 2005 by volunteer firefighter Eric Breteau, announced in April it planned on “evacuating orphans from Darfur.” The group launched an appeal for host families and funding.

Established French aid and adoption agencies raised questions about how the group could legally organize adoption of children from Darfur, and alerted French judicial authorities, according to French newspaper reports.

The French Foreign Ministry in August warned families to be careful. Still, some 300 families reportedly signed up to adopt or foster children, and many were waiting at a French airport last week for the children when they heard members of the group had been arrested.

Most aid agencies around the world do not recommend separating families during humanitarian crisis and have condemend the actions of Zoe’s Ark.

Save the Children, the international child advocacy and aid group, said it did not support taking children from their families.

“Separating children from their family or moving them across the border is obviously something very difficult to regulate and that’s something that STC tries to advocate against because it exposes them to more risk of exploitation,” said Aurelie Lamaziere of Save the Children UK, who was recently in Chad.

The Zoe’s Ark campaign was also condemned in a joint statement distributed by Oxfam and signed by several international aid and development organizations working in Chad.