Our Global Impact: Conflict in the Ivory Coast

January 12, 2011

The strife-torn West African nation of Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) was once a beacon of prosperity for the region. But since a 2002 civil war, the country has been divided between north and south and wracked by years of political confrontation, coups and countercoups, and street violence.

It was hoped that an oft-postponed presidential election in November 2010, the first in 10 years, would be a force for peace and unity. Instead, it led to a new crisis, as the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to step down despite declarations by the United Nations, the African Union, the United States and the European Union that he had been defeated by Alassane Ouattara, a former prime minister, banker and leader of the opposition.

Mr. Ouattara barricaded himself in a hotel under the protection of United Nations peacekeeping troops, as Mr. Gbagbo, who continues to be supported by the army and a portion of the population, brushed aside calls that he resign. Mr. Gbagbo, a leftist university professor-turned-populist strongman whose term ended in 2005, rebuffed entreaties from three neighboring heads of state, as West African nations threatened to use military force to oust him if he refuses to leave.

The country’s top elections officer proclaimed Mr. Ouattara the winner on Dec. 2, by a nearly nine-point margin. Only a day later, the head of the Constitutional Council, who is a close ally of the president, threw out vote totals from parts of the north — the stronghold of Mr. Ouattara — because of what he called “flagrant irregularities,” leading both men to claim the presidency.

The deadly standoff between the rival presidents appears to be broadening. Armed forces associated with the Ouattara camp have clashed with Mr. Gbagbo’s forces on the streets of the nation’s economic capital, Abidjan, as well as in a town in the center of the country. Security forces loyal to President Gbagbo have opened fire on demonstrators. After men in military uniforms fired on a United Nations patrol on Dec. 18, President Gbagbo ordered United Nations and French peacekeepers to leave the country immediately. Analysts fear the departure of some 10,000 United Nations peacekeepers would increase the risk of a return of the civil war.

By the start of 2011, the United Nations said that at least 173 people had died. Once-gleaming downtown Abidjan, a magnet for immigrants from all over West Africa in the days when people spoke of the Ivorian “miracle,” has become a forest of darkened high-rise windows. Investors have pulled out; jobs have vanished. More than four million young men are unemployed in a nation of some 21 million people, according to the World Bank.

Rebels continue to control the partly Muslim north, feeding off smuggling and illicit taxation, while the west remains a substantially lawless domain of robbery and rape, a recent Human Rights Watch report said.

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Conflict in the Ivory Coast

General Information on Ivory Coast