A billboard in Abidjan's Cocody neighbourhood urges Ivoirians to refrain from defacing campaign materials. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
ABIDJAN , Apr 29 2013 (IPS)

Last week’s local elections in Côte d’Ivoire were supposed to be a contest between members of the current governing coalition. But in municipal races, independent candidates claimed more seats than either of the coalition’s two main parties, suggesting possible dissatisfaction with President Alasanne Ouattara at the local level.

Landry Kuyo, secretary general of the My Way Network, a youth organisation that promotes political participation, told IPS he believed the strength of independent candidates nationwide suggested that the population was frustrated with Ouattara and with political parties in general.

“The population does not have confidence in the political parties,” he said. “They want to hear from candidates who will develop their neighbourhoods, not from politicians. That is why the independent candidates appeal to them.”

Official results released on Friday Apr. 26 showed that independent candidates claimed 72 seats, compared to 65 for Ouattara’s Rally of the Republicans (RDR) and 49 for the Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI). The turnout for those races was 36.44 percent, according to the Independent Electoral Commission.

The platforms of individual candidates mostly featured local development projects, such as proposed upgrades to schools, health centres, markets and transport systems. However, many candidates cited youth employment and reconciliation as larger issues they hoped to tackle. Ouattara has been credited with turning the economy around since coming to office, although at the local level this has not necessarily translated into significant quality of life improvements.

“The success of independent candidates was the main surprise of these elections, which appear to have been more competitive than initially expected despite the (former President Laurent Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front) FPI’s decision to boycott the contest,” Samir Gadio, a London-based emerging markets analyst at Standard Bank, told IPS.

“This suggests the democratic process is maturing and that various party apparatuses are perhaps starting to gradually lose their previously significant influence on Ivorian society.”

The Apr. 21 vote was the first time Ivorians were able to select municipal and regional leaders in more than a decade, due to a prolonged political crisis that made local elections impossible.

The crisis culminated in five months of violence that killed at least 3,000 people after Gbagbo refused to leave office despite having lost the November 2010 presidential runoff vote to Ouattara. Gbagbo was arrested in April 2011 following an intervention from France and the United Nations.

The former president’s FPI chose to boycott the local races, just as it boycotted legislative elections in 2011.

That appeared to leave the field open to the RDR and PDCI, whose support of Ouattara in 2010 helped propel him to victory. The PDCI is led by former President Henri Konan Bedie.

Several of the so-called independent candidates were actually members of the FPI who bucked the party’s decision to boycott. The FPI openly acknowledged this in a statement announcing the suspension of 15 candidates who decided to stand.

Other independent candidates had ties to the RDR or PDCI but were not chosen to represent the parties in the local races.

This was the case of Soumahoro Farikou, an independent candidate in Abidjan’s Adjame district who formerly organised for the RDR. He was passed over in the official selection for the municipal race, and he lost to the RDR candidate by just 1,000 votes, prompting his supporters to take to the streets for two days in protest.

But even though some independent candidates had clear ties to the coalition, they were still running as outsiders, standing against officially-selected candidates who benefited from the parties’ financial resources and support bases.

Throughout the two-week campaign period, there was little debate on national issues. Nonetheless, many RDR candidates pitched themselves as champions of Ouattara’s national policies, vowing to help implement them on the ground.

Kafana Kone, a former government minister who ran successfully on the RDR ticket in Abidjan’s Yopougon district, touted a 10-point platform that included improvements to local transportation systems and market upgrades. But when asked why voters should choose him over his PDCI rival, he first cited his loyalty to the president’s agenda.

“We’ve had a difficult few years, but now we have installed Alassane Ouattara as head of state and given the RDR control of the National Assembly,” he told IPS. “Now we need to make sure the RDR has control at the local level to ensure the best implementation of the president’s programme. I am nothing more than a soldier for this programme’s implementation.”

But Roger Akouman, a 24-year-old university student in Yopougon, told IPS that Ouattara’s government had failed to foster reconciliation following the conflict, and that he wanted municipal candidates to make that goal their focus.

Various rights groups have faulted the government for only prosecuting Gbagbo supporters over crimes committed during the post-election violence, despite widespread evidence that both sides committed crimes.

The country’s armed forces have also been accused of mistreating and torturing Gbagbo supporters, notably in response to a series of attacks on military installations by unknown gunmen last year.

“These municipal elections are very important, because it is the local candidates that are going to be able to help us progress past the conflict,” Akouman said. “So far, the government at the national level has been unable to do that.”

Members of the governing coalition, including Kone in Yopougon, won all 13 of the municipal seats in Abidjan, underscoring its continued clout.

In the run-up to the election, the My Way Network organised a debate for municipal candidates in Abidjan’s Cocody district, something Kuyo said had never been done before in a local race. Of 13 candidates, nine agreed to show up, but in the end only three did – all of them independents.

Kuyo said he hoped the results would make the parties more responsive to voters in the future.

Reacting to early results that first pointed to a strong showing from independents, RDR spokesman Joel N’Guessan indicated Kuyo’s wish may come to pass. “We will learn to better take into account the aspirations of the base,” he told IPS.

Members of Cote d'Ivoire's armed forces march during the country's Independence Day celebrations on Aug. 7. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
ABIDJAN, Feb 8 2013 (IPS)

The extradition of high-level allies of former Côte d’Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo from Ghana back to their home country, including a most recent one on Feb. 5, has brought renewed scrutiny to the Ivorian judiciary, which critics say is implementing a form of one-sided victor’s justice since the 2010 to 2011 post-election conflict.

More than 3,000 people died in Côte d’Ivoire after Gbagbo refused to cede power despite losing the November 2010 election to his successor, President Alassane Ouattara.

Forces loyal to both Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara allegedly committed grave crimes during the violence. But despite evidence that showed Gbagbo supporters were singled out for execution in parts of Abidjan and the country’s western region, no Alassane Ouattara loyalists have been credibly investigated for alleged crimes, while 55 Gbagbo loyalists have been detained and charged with violent crimes.

Security official Jean-Noel Abehi and youth leader Jean-Yves Dibopieu were arrested in Ghana and added to the list Gbagbo loyalists taken into Ivorian custody. However, the charges have not yet been made public.

Abehi was a top gendarmerie official under Gbagbo and has been accused by a United Nations experts panel of helping orchestrate attacks on Ivorian military installations last year, while Dibopieu served as a leader in two youth organisations that have been implicated in rights abuses during the electoral violence.

“We want to call on Ivorian authorities to go further and not just target the pro-Gbagbos. Justice cannot move at two speeds. The pro-(President Alassane) Ouattaras also committed crimes. It is necessary that warrants be issued against them,” Ali Ouattara, chairman of the Ivorian Coalition for the International Criminal Court (ICC), told IPS.

“These arrests are a warning to all those who have committed crimes in Côte d’Ivoire. They are strong signals in the fight against impunity,” Ali Ouattara added.

The office for Abidjan’s prosecutor has declined interview requests, saying the prosecutor is too busy to comment.

The extradition of Abehi and Dibopieu comes after Charles Ble Goude, head of the ultranationalist Young Patriots movement, was arrested on Jan. 17 in the coastal Ghanaian town of Tema and transferred to Abidjan, where he was subsequently charged with war crimes.

However, according to Ali Ouattara, Côte d’Ivoire does not have the capacity to try crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity – all of which are under the jurisdiction of the ICC. And circumstances surrounding Ble Goude’s detention have been less than lawful.

Since Ble Goude arrived in Abidjan, his lawyers say they have been granted only limited access to him, adding that they did not know where he was being detained, likening his transfer to a “kidnapping”. Côte d’Ivoire’s criminal procedure code guarantees the right to an attorney during proceedings and questioning, though Ble Goude’s lawyers have said they were not informed prior to his first court appearance and raised concerns that he may have been questioned without legal representation.

After Ble Goude’s second court appearance on Jan. 30, Herve Gouamene, one of the lawyers, told IPS that Ble Goude himself did not know where he was being held. All Ble Goude knew was that he was “held in a house somewhere” and that it was not a standard place of detention. His lawyers say that there are no provisions in Ivorian law for this, while Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko has defended the detention conditions, saying they are necessary for Ble Goude’s detention.

Rene Legre Houkou, president of the Ivorian Human Rights League, voiced concern about the “war crimes” charges against Ble Goude, which he described as questionable. There is no statute for war crimes in the Ivorian penal code, though the code does mention “crimes against the civilian population” that might apply in Ble Goude’s case.

“It is indeed not an offense under our laws,” Houkou told IPS. “A situation of this nature, which poses the question of the legality of the process, must not be taken lightly.”

Ble Goude’s international lawyer, Nick Kaufman, said in a statement on Jan. 19 that he had asked ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda whether Ble Goude was the subject of an arrest warrant from that court. According to the statement, Bensouda has refused “to confirm or deny whether or not she had or was currently seeking Ble Goude’s surrender to The Hague.”

The ICC has already issued arrest warrants for Laurent and Simone Gbagbo. While Alassane Ouattara’s government allowed for Laurent Gbagbo’s transfer in November 2011, making him the first former head of state to be taken into the court’s custody, it has not yet said whether it will let Simone Gbagbo go or instead try her at home.

Justice Minister Gnenema Coulibaly has previously argued that Côte d’Ivoire’s judiciary has been reformed since Laurent Gbagbo’s transfer in November 2011, and is now capable of trying complex cases stemming from the post-election violence.

Because war crimes constitute one of the three categories of crimes falling under the ICC’s jurisdiction, filing war crimes charges against Ble Goude could be an attempt to strengthen the claim that the country’s judiciary can handle complex cases stemming from the conflict. But concerns still remain.

“The one-sided justice for Côte d’Ivoire’s post-election violence needs to swiftly change if the Alassane Ouattara government is to break from Côte d’Ivoire’s dangerous legacy of impunity,” said Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Clinique de Confiance was the first clinic in Côte d’Ivoire to begin targeting men who have sex with men. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
ABIDJAN , Dec 1 2012 (IPS)

When Emmanuel Kokou, a 28-year-old sex worker, moved from his native Togo to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in 2010, he knew there was a good chance that he had previously been exposed to HIV. But he had no intention of getting tested.

“I had done a lot of silly things,” said Kokou, whose name has been changed to protect his identity. “But I never got a test because I was afraid.”

That changed only after he visited Clinique de Confiance, a compact one-story facility tucked behind an unassuming blue gate in an upscale section of this West African nation’s economic capital. The test came back positive, and since then Kokou has learned how to manage his health and avoid transmitting HIV to others – namely, by insisting his clients wear condoms.

“If the clinic wasn’t here I wouldn’t have had the courage to do this,” he told IPS, referring to the process of learning his status and how to live with it. “There are people here who give us advice and reassure us.”

Clinique de Confiance was the first clinic in Côte d’Ivoire to begin targeting men who have sex with men (MSM), starting in 2004 with sex workers and their partners before expanding to all MSM in 2007. Although two other clinics offering similar services have opened recently, Clinique de Confiance remains by far the most established.

As such, the clinic has played a critical role in Côte d’Ivoire’s bid to lower the adult HIV prevalence rate, one of the highest in West Africa. Staff members estimate that roughly 1,000 MSM have visited the clinic over the years – only a portion of the total population (for which there are no good estimates), but still a significant achievement.

Activists warn, however, that unless something is done about the heavy stigmatisation that MSM face in Ivorian society – especially those who are HIV positive – it will be difficult to build on progress the clinic has made so far.

Unlike regional neighbours such as Liberia and Nigeria, where the issue of homosexuality has been highly politicised and lesbian gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) populations have recently been targeted by harsh anti-gay legislation, Côte d’Ivoire does not have a reputation for persecuting MSM. A report broadcast by a Dutch radio outlet last year went so far as to declare that Abidjan was “becoming a gay Eldorado.”

Yet Dr. Camille Anoma, coordinator of the NGO that runs Clinique de Confiance, said discrimination against MSM – at home, at school, at work, in health centres and out on the streets – is common. He noted that no other health facilities were even trying to serve the MSM population before Clinique de Confiance started in 2004.

“Before that, the focus of our activity was female sex workers,” Anoma told IPS. “But the staff at the clinic kept seeing commercial sex workers who were men having sex with men. Our question was, ‘What is the situation of MSM in this country?’ And nobody seemed to know. That’s the reason why we decided to offer services for this group.”

Though the available data is limited, it is clear that HIV prevalence rates are considerably higher for MSM than the general population. UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, estimates that the national adult prevalence rate was three percent in 2011. Internal numbers from Clinique de Confiance show that figure was 24.5 percent for MSM in 2009.

Claver N. Toure, executive director of the LGBT group Alternative Côte d’Ivoire, said the situation would be far worse without Clinique de Confiance and the two other clinics that welcome MSM. “It would be a catastrophe,” he told IPS. “The MSM are obligated to get their treatment and their prevention from these clinics because they’re not going to the general hospitals,” where they may be treated with derision.

There are a number of factors preventing Clinique de Confiance from expanding its reach, including logistical challenges such as transport costs. But Morley Bienvenu Nangone, head of monitoring and evaluation for Arc-En-Ciel Plus, a group that combats HIV/AIDS and homophobia, said the most formidable challenges were cultural.

He said the stigma associated with homosexuality prevents many men from acknowledging even to themselves that they are gay, making it far less likely that they will seek out HIV prevention and treatment resources. “What needs to be done for health is not just to focus on health, because health problems are linked to socio-cultural problems,” Nangone told IPS.

Nangone said that is why it was essential that Clinique de Confiance maintain a low profile. “If it wasn’t confidential, if there were large signs outside, then it wouldn’t work as well,” he said.

The experience of Kokou, the Togolese sex worker, underscores just how pervasive the stigma can be. He said that even though he had come to terms with his sexuality and his HIV-status, he kept both a secret for fear of how others would react.

“I don’t share my status because people will see me differently,” he said. “You’re seen badly, and people don’t trust you. I haven’t told anybody, not even a friend, not my dad or my mom. Nobody knows outside of the clinic.”

He went on: “As for being open as a gay person, I don’t even know how that would work. I just don’t go out. I just don’t have very many friends.”

Nouma Camara stands near the Akouedo open-air dumpsite in Abidjan. Camara says the effects of a 2006 toxic waste dumping here still prevent him from working full-time. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
ABIDJAN, Sep 26 2012 (IPS)

Nouma Camara, a 40-year-old tailor, remembers waking up on Aug. 20, 2006 to a smell he described as “something catastrophic.” His home in Akouedo village, in Côte d’Ivoire’s commercial capital city of Abidjan, lies adjacent to a large, open-air dumpsite where toxic waste had been dumped the night before.

Almost immediately, the symptoms began to set in: nausea, headaches, eye irritation, blisters forming on his exposed skin. His wife, who was eight months pregnant at the time, fled to a village in the country’s north, concerned for their child’s safety. Camara eventually left for a short time as well.

“We couldn’t stay here because we didn’t want to smell this bad smell,” he told IPS, referring to what other victims have said was like a mix of garlic, gas and rotten eggs.

Six years later, blisters still form regularly on his hands, keeping him away from the clothes in his shop for days at a time. Although large sums have been allocated for compensation as part of settlements related to the toxic waste dumping at 18 different sites in the commercial capital of this West African nation, Camara is one of many victims who have never received so much as a dollar.

Ivorian authorities have said that the dumping of toxic waste created by Trafigura, the multinational Europe-based organisation, resulted in at least 15 deaths and spurred more than 100,000 residents of Abidjan to seek medical treatment.

On Tuesday Sep. 25, Amnesty International and Greenpeace International released the results of a three-year joint investigation that attempts to tell the whole story of the scandal.

The report recommended that the United Kingdom pursue criminal investigations against Trafigura and urged Côte d’Ivoire to review a 2007 settlement for 200 million dollars with the company that granted it immunity from prosecution here.

Audrey Gaughran, Amnesty International’s Africa director, told IPS that she believed the report provided “as solid a picture as we think is possible apart from an epidemiological study” on just how victims were affected. It also details the ways in which compensation schemes have fallen short.

Long journey to Abidjan

The report described the waste’s convoluted path from the United Arab Emirates to Abidjan via Europe, and accuses Trafigura of exploiting weak international law enforcement in trying to dispose of it. But Gaughran said this was no excuse for any crimes that were committed to go unpunished.

“What happened here is that international laws weren’t properly enforced because we were dealing with an actor that was moving from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and from country to country,” Gaughran said. “What we’re working towards is full accountability so that victims get the compensation they’re entitled to.”

According to the report, Trafigura subjected large amounts of an unrefined gasoline called coker naphtha to a waste-generating process known as “caustic washing”. It then attempted to offload the waste in various locations in Europe and then in Nigeria before a subsidiary partnered with a newly-licensed company to offload it in Abidjan.

Waste was dumped in at least 18 different sites throughout the city, including near homes and schools.

Amnesty International and Greenpeace International said that while Trafigura did not dump the waste itself, it played a role that “has never been subject to a full court proceeding.”

In a response sent to Amnesty International and later posted on the multinational’s website, Trafigura said that the report contained “significant inaccuracies and misrepresentations.”

It also said the report “oversimplifies difficult legal issues, analyses them based on ill-founded assumptions and draws selective conclusions which do not adequately reflect the complexity of the situation of the legal processes.

“Courts in five jurisdictions have reviewed different aspects of the incident, and decisions and settlements have been made. It is simply wrong to suggest that the issues have not had the right judicial scrutiny,” Trafigura said.

The company also disputed the Ivorian government’s casualty totals, contending that the waste could only have caused “low level flulike symptoms and anxiety.”

Compensation woes

Trafigura did agree that the implementation of compensation schemes has at times been “regrettable.” In 2007, Trafigura and Côte d’Ivoire reached a settlement in which the company would pay about 200 million dollars for compensation and clean-up while receiving immunity from prosecution.

But Gaughran said a government distribution scheme had to be closed down over “allegations of irregularities,” and it was unclear weather all the victims identified by the government had received payments.

In 2009, Trafigura agreed to pay 45 million dollars to settle a complaint brought by 30,000 victims in the U.K., but distribution was again corrupted – this time in a scandal that led to the May resignation of the Ivorian Minister for African Integration Adama Bictogo. Some 6,000 victims in the case did not receive the money that was owed to them, according to the report.

Helene Djeke, a 59-year-old resident of Akouedo village, said compensation would go a long way toward helping her take care of her 32-year-old daughter, who she said suffered heart problems and poor eyesight following exposure to the waste and has been unable to work ever since.

Even more helpful, she said, would be a full accounting of what exactly victims were exposed to – information that Guaghran said had not been disclosed.

“I’m not happy with the fact that the people who did this are still not punished,” Djeke said.

Yacouba Doumbia, president of the Ivorian Movement for Human Rights, said the organisation supported the calls to pursue criminal investigations into the dumping.

“We will work so that we can know the extent of the damages and the identities of those responsible, so that victims obtain fair reparation for the damages they have suffered,” he said.

Referring to the 2007 agreement that gave Trafigura immunity, Doumbia said: “We believe the state has failed Ivorians. The consequences of the spill of the waste were overlooked because of crass monetary considerations. Moreover, many victims who have been identified have so far received none of the money given to the state.”

Members of Cote d'Ivoire's armed forces march during the country's Independence Day celebrations on Aug. 7. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
ABIDJAN, Sep 22 2012 (IPS)

In his black boots and green fatigues – complete with arm patches bearing the name of the national army, Forces Republicaines de Côte d’Ivoire – Ousmane Kone looked every bit the soldier as he stood guard over an electricity and water distribution company one Tuesday afternoon in Abidjan.

But his appearance was somewhat misleading. The 22-year-old received no formal training before he was handed his first Kalashnikov rifle last year, and he has never been registered with the Côte d’Ivoire army.

What is more, the building he was guarding was not state property, but rather a private company owned by his “commander,” a former insurgent from the New Forces rebel group or Forces Nouvelles de Côte d’Ivoire (FNCI).

Kone is one of an untold number of fighters who took up arms during Côte d’Ivoire’s recent post-election conflict, which unfolded after former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede office despite losing the November 2010 election to current President Alassane Ouattara.

Distraught over reports that fellow members of his Dioula ethnic group were being burned alive at Abidjan roadblocks manned by pro-Gbagbo fighters, Kone did not hesitate to join the pro-Ouattara faction during the decisive battle in the commercial capital in April 2011 that culminated in Gbagbo’s arrest. 

“Our friends were being massacred, and we weren’t powerful because we didn’t have weapons,” he said. “Every day we were hiding until pro-Ouattara fighters launched the attack on Abidjan (in April 2011).”

Today, he faces an uncertain future. As Côte d’Ivoire gears up for a long-awaited disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme, to be conducted in concert with broader reforms to the security sector, thousands of young men are worried that they may have their weapons taken from them.

Analysts say these anxieties could have partly fuelled a recent spate of attacks on military positions that killed at least 12 soldiers in August, marking some of the most significant violence since the conflict ended more than a year ago.

The new DDR campaign, which was reviewed by Ouattara’s cabinet last month but has not yet begun, will not be the first for Côte d’Ivoire. Following a failed coup attempt against Gbagbo in 2002, the country was partitioned for eight years, with the FNCI controlling the north.

Though disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration were attempted during that period, the effort failed for a host of reasons, not least of which was that the conflict had not been resolved.

Alain-Richard Donwahi, Ouattara’s defence and security adviser and secretary of his national security council, told IPS that, prior to the recent conflict, the government estimated around 70,000 combatants needed to be disarmed – 32,000 from the FNCI and 38,000 from what he described as “pro-Gbagbo militia groups.”

He said the government did not yet have good figures for the number of fighters who joined warring factions during the conflict.

Arthur Boutellis, senior policy analyst at the International Peace Institute, said that pro-Gbagbo militia groups would raise the number needing to be disarmed considerably. “Right now, given the numbers, we’re talking potentially about 100,000 people,” he said. “We don’t know exactly, but the numbers are huge.”

Donwahi acknowledged that several key questions still needed to be answered before the disarmament process could begin. One is determining who will actually be eligible for the job training programmes that he said would form the crux of the scheme’s reintegration component.

Describing who might not qualify, Donwahi said: “Some people who come to be disarmed say they’re part of an independent group of combatants. But we know we didn’t have independent combatants here. We had clear chains of command.”

But that analysis does not square with most accounts of the violence. In addition to parallel chains of command within the FNCI, Côte d’Ivoire’s conflict also featured foreign mercenaries and various other militia groups. In addition, the dozos, traditional hunters who have long assumed informal security roles, were active in the fighting and retain a strong presence in large parts of the country, according to observers such as Human Rights Watch.

Though these groups are not likely to be part of the disarmament process, Boutellis said they could serve as potential “spoilers,” and could discourage other combatants from handing over their weapons.

A separate government body set up to disarm civilians, the National Commission for the Fight against the Proliferation of Light and Small Arms, estimates that there are some three million weapons still in circulation. Côte d’Ivoire’s population is roughly 20 million.

More than one year after the conflict ended, Côte d’Ivoire remains highly polarised. Efforts to restart political dialogue between the government and Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front political party have amounted to little. Divisions have only been sharpened by a justice process that many view as one-sided.

More than 100 Gbagbo loyalists have been detained in connection with post-election violence crimes, while no Ouattara allies have been arrested or credibly investigated, according to information provided by prosecutors.

These factors, combined with lingering security concerns, would make it “unrealistic” for the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration process to focus on weapons collection from the beginning, Boutellis said, as many combatants view their weapons as a kind of “insurance policy.”

“You have to start with reintegration programmes that could lead to a better climate, which could then lead to weapons collection,” he said.

More work needs to be done to develop reintegration programmes, especially when it comes to job training, Donwahi said. “We are not going to create jobs by magic,” he said. “It’s important to match job opportunities to the skills of demobilised fighters.”

Asked which areas the government might prioritise, Donwahi mentioned agriculture and mechanical work as examples.

Even if the remaining steps are done well, the disarmament process remains fraught with danger, Boutellis said. “The problems will come, and I think that already some of these attacks are linked to the fact that combatants don’t know where they will fall,” he said, referring to the attacks on military positions in August. “Some people are scared they will be left out. Some people are scared that they won’t get what they want.”

This holds true for Mohamed Bakayoko, a 20-year-old combatant who, like Kone, joined the national army during the battle for Abidjan and remains unregistered.

He told IPS that he likes the stability of the army – though he does not have a salary at present, he does receive shelter and regular meals, no small thing in a country where unemployment for young men was at 57 percent in 2010, according to the World Bank. Bakayoko wants to be fully integrated into the army so that he can provide for his family.

“Personally, I want to be a soldier, as my family is depending on me,” he said. “I’m thinking about nothing else.”

He said he believed, however, that many unregistered soldiers actually had no appetite for military service and would be amenable to participating in a well-run DDR programme.

“Most of them are waiting for the DDR programme,” he said of his peers. “During the recent attacks, most of them … didn’t want to fight, so they went back to the village.”

The key, Kone said, would be to convince combatants like himself that they can have a viable future outside the army, which means giving them skills beyond what they currently have.

“The only thing I’ve learned since the beginning of the conflict is how to use a weapon,” he said. “So I don’t want to give up my weapon now.”

Painter Karim Traore, 40, puts the finishing touches on a gate at a newly refurbished university in Abidjan. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
ABIDJAN, Sep 4 2012 (IPS)

Yacouba Coulibaly was pursuing a doctorate in education at Cocody University in Abidjan before Côte d’Ivoire’s post-election violence started in 2010. But his classes were routinely disrupted by armed members of a powerful student federation that wished to hold meetings instead.

Later, the country’s public universities were closed in 2011 at the end of the post-election violence and Coulibaly was unable to continue his studies.

But now he is one of an estimated 61,000 students who are expected to start classes soon in the new academic year, as the country’s five public universities reopened on Monday Sep. 3.

“I hope we will have a peaceful university, where people do not behave like we’ve seen in the past,” he told IPS.

“I don’t want my younger brothers and sisters to suffer this same way,” he said, referring to the West African nation’s future crop of students.

Coulibaly said that the reopening of the universities, marked by a ceremony on Monday at Cocody University (which has been renamed after the country’s founding president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny), would help the country develop.

“When you see a country without universities, there is something wrong. You cannot talk about development without universities,” he said.

Côte d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara is also hoping that large-scale investment in the education sector can help his country’s universities shed a legacy of violence and corruption that contributed to recent turmoil. But concerns persist that higher education could again be corrupted by politics.

Speaking at Monday’s ceremony, Ouattara pledged to nurture a university system that would rival the best in the world, and also vowed to implement reforms at the primary and secondary levels.

“As an economist, I am convinced that investment in universities brings the highest yield in development,” he said.

The president lamented the role universities played in the nation’s 2010 to 2011 post-election crisis. He said they had become places “of violence and corruption” during the administration of former President Laurent Gbagbo.

Ouattara defeated Gbagbo in the November 2010 election, but the incumbent refused to cede office, sparking violence that claimed at least 3,000 lives. Gbagbo, who has since been transferred to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, used to be a professor. He garnered strong support from university faculties and the Student Federation of Côte d’Ivoire (FESCI).

For years leading up to the violence, FESCI had become associated with extortion and racketeering, often resorting to violence. A 2008 Human Rights Watch (HRW) report implicated FESCI members in assault, extortion and rape, saying members targeted Gbagbo’s political opponents with impunity. HRW and other groups have also said FESCI members were involved in the 2010-2011 conflict.

Augustin Mian, FESCI’s secretary general, told IPS the group had been turned into a scapegoat for the country’s past problems, and claimed FESCI members have been targeted for abuse by pro-Ouattara forces since the conflict ended.

“We are protesting against the fact that people say we are militias,” he said. He added that the group would continue to advocate on behalf of students, and planned to protest a pending increase in registration fees.

Ouattara has defended the move to close the universities in the first place, which was unpopular with many Ivorians.

Rene Legre Houkou, president of the Ivorian Human Rights League, was among those who thought the decision wrong.

“For us, this decision stopped the normal process of teaching and training,” he told IPS.

“We thought that this violated the right to education, and we were worried that all of these students would be left doing nothing.”

Houkou said officials would face a number of challenges as the universities resumed classes, including finding replacements for the many professors who were allies of Gbagbo and are now in exile.

Meanwhile, students in Abidjan said they hoped the five university campuses – refurbished at a cost of roughly 210 million dollars – would be peaceful from now on.

Most students said they were just happy the existing universities were open again. Kone Pranhoro, a 30-year-old pursuing a PhD in economics, said it was “a good opportunity for the future generation.”

“We hope that politics will never be involved in the universities again,” he said.

Fatoumata Yire Soro’s two-year-old daughter received treatment for malnourishment over the last two months. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
KORHOGO, Cote d’Ivoire, Aug 14 2012 (IPS)

Salimata Coulibaly, director of a medical centre in the town of Korhogo in the northern Cote d’Ivoire region of Savanes, stood before a chart displaying before-and-after photos of local children – one taken when each child arrived at the centre, and one after he or she responded to treatment for malnutrition.

In recent weeks she has had no shortage of photos to take. The number of children brought to the centre for weighing is on the rise, having ballooned from 162 in April to 674 in July.

“A crisis has begun. We’re in the lean season,” Coulibaly told IPS, referring to the period from June to August when food stocks in the part of this West African nation typically run low ahead of the next harvest.

Christina de Bruin, deputy representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Cote d’Ivoire, told IPS that her agency had noted a similar increase of malnourished children in feeding centres throughout the north.

Seasonal hunger is nothing new in northern Cote d’Ivoire, a region where families cope with high levels of poverty and poor soil. But this year new challenges have arisen that could compound the problem.

The region was hit hard by Cote d’Ivoire’s post-election crisis, a six-month civil conflict that claimed at least 3,000 lives, which erupted when former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede office after losing the November 2010 election.

Hundreds of thousands of Ivoirians were displaced, with tens of thousands ending up in the northern Savanes region, where they were largely taken in by host families, according to the U.N. Although the crisis ended more than a year ago, allowing some displaced to return, the strain put on host families’ food stocks is still being felt.

The political unrest has since been replaced by the regional food crisis in the Sahel region of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad brought on by erratic rains and the resulting poor harvests and water shortages. Oxfam International says 18 million people are facing a food crisis this year in West and Central Africa, including in Burkina Faso and Mali, which border Cote d’Ivoire.

De Bruin said that the regional food shortage had, in effect, “drained a part of the local harvest” in Cote d’Ivoire by sharply increasing the cost of staple foods.

Lastly, erratic rains in Cote d’Ivoire last year made the harvest especially poor, meaning that the lean season has been tougher than usual for many families.

All of this has the potential to undo recent nutritional gains in the region. According to data cited by the U.N., global acute malnutrition had fallen from 17.5 percent in 2008 to 5.8 percent earlier this year.

However, a survey conducted in April by the U.N. World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Ministry of Agriculture estimated that some 110,000 people in the Savanes region could be at risk of food insecurity, and that “the most likely scenario in 2012 could be compared to the situation in 2008,” when the region was under rebel control and reeling from a decline in basic social services.

At the Korhogo medical centre, Coulibaly said she watched conditions gradually grow more dire. Not only are many families eating just one meal per day, she said, they are often so hard-pressed to work for that meal that they delay seeking medical care when the first signs of malnutrition appear.

“They only come to nutrition centres when it’s really becoming serious,” she said. “They tend to wait until it’s too late because they don’t want to waste time getting treatment.”

At a nutrition centre in a village outside of Korhogo called M’Benguebougou, Fatoumata Yire Soro, 22, described the pressure she faced before deciding to bring her two-year-old daughter in for treatment about two months ago.

“I was very concerned about the health of my child, who I could see was malnourished,” said Soro, who sells charcoal. “But at the same time, I have to deal with the pressure from home because I am not in the field (earning a living). In the end, the health of my child was the most important thing.”

Delaying medical treatment for children is just one adverse coping mechanism adopted by families struggling to feed themselves. Parents are also more likely to take their children out of school – something De Bruin said had been seen throughout the region in response to the Sahel food crisis.

“A lot of children have left the education system, unfortunately,” she said. “We are seeing that due to the Sahel crisis children are leaving school earlier.”

An entrenched problem

Thomas Bassett, professor of geography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and co-author of the 2010 book The Atlas of World Hunger, told IPS that it is important to be mindful of the structural factors contributing to hunger in Cote d’Ivoire.

More than 40 percent of children under the age of five here experience stunting, meaning they are not getting sufficient food for normal growth.

“We know that about 45 percent of the population lives on two dollars per day. So that’s almost half the population (of nearly 20 million people) which is vulnerable to falling into hunger,” said Bassett.

“If you’re living on two dollars per day, any kind of extreme event – it could be a drought, it could be political instability, it could be low prices for your cash crops – would put people over the edge.” Bassett has been conducting fieldwork in Korhogo and its surroundings for more than 30 years.

One of the main reasons for this poverty, he said, is that farmers are not receiving enough money for cash crops, namely cotton and cashews.

The prices for both are set by private umbrella organisations composed of producers and purchasers based in Abidjan. He said this problem could in part be addressed by greater mobilisation by farmers to demand the highest possible prices for their product. A secondary intervention, Bassett said, would be to increase access to agricultural inputs such as fertiliser.

Bassett added, however, that the government of Alassane Ouattara was not likely to take on the problem of hunger in the north with great energy, especially if the administration felt secure in retaining strong voter support from the region.

Following a coup attempt targeting former president Gbagbo in 2002, the north was partitioned off from the south and was administered by the rebel Forces Nouvelles (New Forces) until the 2010 election. Northerners voted overwhelmingly for Ouattara, who hails from the region.

“My view is that because there’s no famine, the government will tolerate chronic hunger,” Bassett said. “I don’t think this is an issue that the government will necessarily feel compelled to address, nor do I think the Ouattara government will necessarily lose any support in the area because of this issue.”

De Bruin said that the government was working with NGOs to provide some assistance, notably in helping to educate communities about the dangers of malnourishment for children, which are not fully appreciated.

“People are not aware of the risk of having severely malnourished children,” she said. “If you have a severely malnourished child who gets diarrhoea, their chances for survival become very, very low.”

But she said that people in the region were expecting significant gains under Ouattara, especially following the decade-long crisis, during which basic social services such as education and health care were dismantled.

“Definitely people are expecting improvement from Ouattara,” she said. “Ensuring children grow up healthy and that they have education – I think only that can break the cycle of poverty and the cycle of violence.”

Emmanuel Biandjui Diffi, 40, stands outside Abidjan's main prison, where he was held for six months earlier this year. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
ABIDJAN, Jul 26 2012 (IPS)

Eliane Negui knew just what to do when she got word that a group of inmates had escaped from Abidjan’s main prison, MACA, earlier this month. After all, the 24-year-old, who has lived across a dirt road from the facility for nine years, had witnessed the same scenario just two months before. 

“Whenever there is an escape we are always running into our rooms and closing the doors,” she said in a recent interview with IPS from her stand outside the prison’s main entrance where she sells fried bananas. “Whenever there is an escape the guards are shooting, so we enter our rooms so as not to be hurt or killed.

Twelve inmates escaped from the prison that day, eight of whom were soon caught. The total paled in comparison to the earlier escape, on May 4, when about 50 inmates broke free from the facility, prompting a statement of concern from Côte d’Ivoire’s United Nations mission.

This West African nation is still rebuilding after six months of post-election violence sparked by the November 2010 election, when former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down after losing to current President Alassane Ouattara. During the violence, the country’s 33 prisons were emptied, and infrastructure and equipment was largely destroyed.

Prisons began re-opening in August 2011, and 31 are now operational. But the recovery has been marred by a rash of prison breaks. Since August, there have been 17 separate escapes involving about 250 prisoners, according to Francoise Simard, chief of the U.N.’s rule of law section.

The problems dogging the country’s prisons mirror larger problems with the security sector — especially when it comes to personnel. Complaints about prison conditions also highlight room for improvement in the country’s post-conflict recovery.

Prior to the violence, which claimed some 3,000 lives, prison guards alone provided security at the country’s penitentiaries. These guards were armed, but there was a shortage of weapons and not all were functional, Simard told IPS.

When prisons began reopening in August, the Republican Forces of Côte d’Ivoire (FRCI), the national army, was the only security force allowed to have weapons. Soldiers began to work alongside prison guards.

More than one year after the conflict ended, prison guards are still unarmed. “The current government is very reluctant to give weapons to prison guards,” Simard said.

This reluctance underscores the lack of trust among the different security forces. Because the number of prison guards nationwide nearly doubled during Gbagbo’s 10-year tenure, there is a perception — whether accurate or not — that most guards are loyal to the old regime.

“There is a suspicious atmosphere in the prison,” said Stephane Boko, a supervisor at MACA Prision in Abidjan, told IPS. “The power no longer rests with the prison guards because they are considered to be pro-Gbagbo.”

A similar division has been evident in the broader security sector. The FRCI is largely composed of forces loyal to Ouattara, including leaders of the Forces Nouvelles rebel group, which controlled northern Côte d’Ivoire when the country was partitioned from 2002 to 2010. The government has long been wary of police and gendarmes, and in some parts of the country — notably the volatile western region — the FRCI remains the only security force with access to weapons, meaning it has taken the lead on general policing.

Recently, though, police and gendarmes have been re-armed in some places, and they now have a permanent presence in the prisons. Under a policy established after the May escape, five police officers and five gendarmes are supposed to be posted in each facility, Simard told IPS.

The presence of multiple security forces in each facility can sometimes lead to a lack of coordination. Earlier this year, for instance, some 93 prisoners were able to escape from a facility in Agboville, a town located roughly 80 kilometres north of Abidjan. In the three days leading up to the escape, Simard said, no security forces showed up to guard the prison.

Boko and other staff at MACA said they believe responsibility for protecting Côte d’Ivoire’s prisons should be returned to the guards. But Serges Kouame, head of communications for the Justice Ministry, said after the prison break earlier this month that a central command center was being established to respond to prison escapes, and that it would involve the FRCI, guards, gendarmes and the police.

Conditions

Meanwhile, concerns persist about conditions facing Côte d’Ivoire’s inmates. The national prison system was dramatically overcrowded prior to the post-election violence, with more than 12,000 prisoners crammed into facilities that have a total capacity of about 5,500, according to the U.N.

The current prison population is much lower – 5,945 as of Jul. 20 — but it recently surpassed the total capacity and is rising by the week. Though Simard noted that “the situation is not as dramatic as it was before with overcrowding,” she said that certain aspects of detention conditions — among them access to food — remain problematic.

The U.S. State Department addressed poor prison conditions in its most recent Human Rights Report for Côte d’Ivoire. Though the report took note of some improvements under Ouattara, it said food provision remained “inadequate.”

This was the main complaint of Emmanuel Biandjui Diffi, a 40-year-old who was held in MACA for six months since January after he sold a plot of land to two different people.

“The conditions were OK, but the quality of the food was very poor,” he told IPS. “There was nothing in the soup – no meat and no fish.”

Diffi also complained about the prison’s policy of feeding inmates just once a day at around 2pm, something Simard said that the U.N. was pushing the government to remedy.

Diffi said the general atmosphere inside the prison was tolerable. “We were living normally,” he said. “We could play football. Some of us were working as tailors. Most of us were spending a lot of our time praying.”

But he singled out one problem that highlights just how far Côte d’Ivoire has yet to go in getting its institutions back on track: prolonged pretrial detention, something the Ouattara government has previously blamed on “a lack of judicial capacity,” according to the U.S. State Department.

More than anything, Diffi said, this issue, and the impression it left of a system that was broken, was fueling desperation within MACA’s walls.

“Most of the people in there have not been prosecuted,” he told IPS. “Some are charged, but many are not. They want to go out. They want to be released. And so they are asking for judgment.”

By Robbie Corey-Boulet and - -
MONROVIA, Nov 8 2011 (IPS)

Liberians headed to the polls in what appeared to be modest numbers Tuesday morning for a presidential runoff that has been marred by an opposition boycott and the deaths of at least two demonstrators at an opposition rally.

U.N. armored vehicles enter the compound of the Congress for Democratic Change after the first round of shooting. At least two demonstrators died. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

In Monrovia, polling centres that saw long lines for the first round witnessed markedly fewer voters as they opened at 8am.

Burnnies Korbor, 20, who voted at a high school in central Monrovia, said she believed the low turnout demonstrated that voters were “scared,” but added that she had no worries about coming out to vote for incumbent President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

“She’s doing well in the country,” Korbor said. “Right now there’s no war, nothing. Everything’s calm.”

On Friday, Winston Tubman, the CDC’s presidential candidate and a former diplomat, announced that his party would not participate in the runoff, citing what he said were irregularities in the first round. Although the CDC has stood behind its boycott call, his name still appears on the ballot.

Tubman placed second with 32.7 percent in the first round. Sirleaf, who was named a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in October, earned 43.9 percent, but needed at least 50 percent to avoid a second round of voting.

Election monitors commended the Oct. 11 ballot as largely free, fair and transparent. The European Union, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States all weighed in with condemnations of the CDC boycott over the weekend. The U.S. State Department said it was “deeply disappointed” by the CDC’s position, adding: “The CDC’s charge that the first-round election was fraudulent is unsubstantiated.”

Aaron Weah, programme associate with the International Centre for Transitional Justice in Monrovia, said Monday evening that it was unclear how the boycott and subsequent violence would affect Tuesday’s vote, which the National Elections Commission said would go ahead as scheduled.

While acknowledging Liberia’s conflict-ridden past, Weah said violence had rarely occurred alongside democratic processes that have been widely viewed as credible. In that respect, he said, “there is no precedent” for Monday’s shootings.

He added that he suspected that the police and politicians shared the blame for Monday’s deaths.

“Today is a lesson that we haven’t broken strongly yet from our past,” he said. “Politicians are still trying to put ordinary people in harm’s way.”

Justice Minister Christiana Tah said at a press conference Monday evening that “unconfirmed reports” indicated that one person might have died. But IPS witnessed at least two dead bodies at the CDC compound on Monday afternoon, one of whom was shot in the head at close range after Liberian police stormed the compound with their guns drawn.

United Nations peacekeepers who arrived on the scene could be seen struggling with the Liberian police and trying to bring them under control.

Since the 2003 conclusion of Liberia’s brutal 14-year civil war, which claimed more than 250,000 lives, the U.N. Mission in Liberia has overseen the restructuring of Liberia’s police force, according to an International Crisis Group report released in August, which noted that the continued presence of U.N. peacekeepers “has been the main guarantor of peace.”

“The national security sector is now able to cope with some threats, but continued international presence is imperative in view of the failings of the police and their very limited reach outside the capital,” the ICG report said.

Tah said at the press conference that she had received reports on Monday of gas stations being looted, police officers being stoned and government and U.N. vehicles being damaged.

She also accused CDC leaders of spreading “inflammatory utterances,” and said such conduct was at least partly responsible for the violence.

“You cannot incite people, especially with disinformation, and that has led to the kind of problem that we have today,” she said.

Excerpt:

By Robbie Corey-Boulet, Stephen Binda, and - -
MONROVIA , Oct 18 2011 (IPS)

Former warlord Prince Johnson, who placed third in Liberia’s election last week, has endorsed the re-election bid of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who was named a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize just days before the vote.

The most recent results from the National Elections Commission (NEC), representing 96.7 percent of total votes cast on Oct. 11, show Johnson with 11.8 percent nationwide. Johnson-Sirleaf is in the lead with 44 percent – she needed more than 50 percent to avoid a runoff. The leading opposition candidate, Winston Tubman of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), is in second place with 32.2 percent. The results are, however, not final.

Johnson, most famous for overseeing the torture and execution of President Samuel Doe in 1990, said in an interview with a community radio station in his native Nimba County on Monday that he would be supporting Johnson-Sirleaf.

Johnson-Sirleaf, 72, will compete with Tubman in a runoff scheduled for Nov. 8.

It remains to be seen how much impact Johnson’s endorsement will have in Nimba, this West African nation’s second most-populous county. Johnson-Sirleaf’s Unity Party earned 25.5 percent of the vote in Nimba in the first round, while Tubman earned just 2.8 percent.

On Monday, Johnson said he believed his supporters were waiting for him to tell them who to vote for, referring to himself several times as a “king-maker”.

The build-up to his endorsement comes amid criticism from the opposition about the manner in which the results have been tallied. On Saturday, nine opposition parties – including the CDC and Johnson’s National Union for Democratic Progress – said they would be pulling out of the election in response to “massive fraud” and threatened not to accept the result.

“We direct all of our party agents assigned at NEC in all capacities to withdraw effective immediately,” the parties said in a statement. “If the process continues we will not accept the results.”

Tubman has since said he would participate in the runoff.

Johnson said Monday that he was convinced there had been widespread irregularities.

“There was cheating,” he said. “There was rigging. Many ballots were tampered with. We have several tally sheets in our possession that clearly indicate that something went wrong.”

NEC has denied allegations of wrongdoing, and a host of international observers have commended the voting process.

The Atlanta-based Carter Center described the vote as “peaceful, orderly, and remarkably transparent” in a statement released Thursday.

“Although the process of tabulating final results is ongoing and preliminary results have not been announced, the electoral process to date is a positive sign of Liberians’ commitment to democratic development,” the statement said.

The Carter Center cited “a number of minor procedural irregularities,” but said none would undermine the integrity of the vote.

“Observed irregularities included polling places where secrecy of the ballot was not strictly maintained, inking procedures undertaken out of order, and ballot papers folded improperly,” the statement said.

Despite his stated concerns about the process, Johnson said any resulting violence would be uncalled for.

“Whatever went wrong should not in any way allow any of us to be so angry to bring about any form of action that would destabilise peace in the country,” he said.

Johnson-Sirleaf delivered an address Monday condemning minor criminal acts reported since the vote, including the torching early Saturday morning of an office belonging to her Unity Party.

International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who was in neighbouring Ivory Coast over the weekend as part of an investigation into the post-election violence that followed that country’s disputed vote last year, issued a warning to Liberia’s political class.

“My office is closely monitoring election-related developments including in neighbouring countries such as Liberia, which could affect stabilisation throughout the West African region,” he said. “We will pay close attention to the actions and statements of the political class, and in particular to the presidential candidates, including after the elections. Resorting to violence will not be tolerated.”

Addressing the factors he would consider in making his endorsement decision, Johnson also raised the prospect of war crimes prosecutions – but he was referring to those covering Liberia’s 14-year civil conflict, which ended in 2003 after claiming more than 250,000 lives.

Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended in 2009 that the country establish a war crimes tribunal and listed Johnson among those who should be prosecuted.

The commission included both Johnson and Johnson-Sirleaf on a list of people who should be banned from politics for 30 years on account of their alleged ties to warring factions. The commission’s recommendations have not been implemented, and the political bans have been deemed unconstitutional by the country’s Supreme Court.

On Monday, Johnson criticised leaders of the CDC – including Tubman and his running mate, former international football star George Weah – for past statements indicating their support of prosecutions.

“When you start arresting people to prosecute you could be bringing us back to zero ground,” he said.

“Frankly speaking, I can’t have my people voting for them,” Johnson continued. “The thing we’re talking about here is nationalism, patriotism. That’s what we are talking about.”

He later added: “We’re not afraid of a war crimes court but we are afraid of bogus charges levelled against us.”

Johnson also said the opposition CDC had failed to promote residents of Nimba County into leadership positions; something he said could hurt its chances in the county.

Excerpt:

By Robbie Corey-Boulet and Stephen Binda
MONROVIA, Oct 11 2011 (IPS)

Liberians cast their ballots Tuesday in an election that has so far been described as orderly and peaceful, though concerns persist that a disputed result could anger voters and fuel minor unrest.

Supporters from President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's Unity Party during the last campaign rally on Sunday. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

Her top rival that year, former international football star George Weah of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), claimed the election was stolen – despite affirmation of the results from a range of international observers – and refused to admit defeat.

This year, Weah is running for vice president under CDC presidential candidate and former diplomat Winston Tubman, but the allegations of fraud have not gone away. The CDC campaign theme song, “It will not hold,” condemns “the rigging of the election” and accuses President Johnson-Sirleaf’s Unity Party of “depending on cheating.”

At the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) polling station in downtown Monrovia on Tuesday, Emmanuel Kollimealyne, an officer with the Community Watch Forum of Liberia, said he had visited four polling stations in the morning and had found the process to be peaceful.

“I think I’m confident now that since the conduct of the campaign was very peaceful, the elections will be peaceful,” he said. “In Liberia we are more mature now.”

But he said there were still doubts that the CDC would be able to accept defeat. “I think it comes from 2005,” he said. “Also, this year they are pre-empting that they will be cheated. They are starting to (sound) the alarm earlier.”

The first voter in line at the YMCA, having arrived at 5am, was Teddy Tubman, the 25-year-old nephew of Winston Tubman.

“I want this election to be peaceful, free and fair,” Teddy Tubman said. “There should be no cheating.”

Asked how he thought the CDC would respond to a loss, he said: “Well, in 2005 the opposition decided to accept the election result because of peace, because of the people. We don’t want this election to repeat what happened in 2005. Any case of cheating might erupt in violence.”

The campaign period came to a close on Sunday, with the parties holding competing rallies in two stadiums in Monrovia. Though large groups of supporters of the CDC and Johnson-Sirleaf’s Unity Party occasionally encountered each other in the streets, the marching and slogan-shouting generally remained good-natured.

Political observers are expecting a close race that could head to a runoff in early November. The National Elections Commission has said results will be announced by Oct. 26, though preliminary results are expected sooner.

CDC Chairman Geraldine Doe-Sheriff has said the party would release its own results, a possibility that has sparked alarm among election monitors. Speaking to reporters Tuesday, General Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s former head of state and head of the Carter Center’s 55-person international election observation mission in Liberia, said such a move would be illegal.

“It is not right. The only person to announce the result is the chairman of the National Electoral Commission,” Gowon said. “If they do it, it is against the law and I hope there is a process whereby such a thing can be dealt with. But it will not be accepted as the result.”

Gowon also said the election was going “exceptionally well” despite light rainfall around midday. “People have turned out in great numbers and enthusiastically,” he said. “It has been going well so far and we hope that it will continue to go well in all places.”

Winston Tubman cast his ballot at around 10:30am at a high school in central Monrovia. “Liberians are peaceful people who are seizing the ballot boxes to do what is necessary so that we can get back on a normal path,” he told reporters.

Asked whether he would win, he responded, “Sure, and in the first round.”

But Mother Ainoson, a 56-year-old supporter of Johnson-Sirleaf, said she believed the incumbent would prevail, and that any allegations of fraud that might ensue would be unfounded.

“If you look at the whole aspect, people have security at all of the polling stations, so who will bypass that and cheat?” she said. “So I want to say that everything will be fair.”

Excerpt:

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
GRAND GEDEH COUNTY, Liberia, Oct 10 2011 (IPS)

As Liberia gears up for Tuesday’s presidential and legislative elections, officials stationed near the border with Ivory Coast have expressed concern that insufficient border security – a problem highlighted by two recent cross-border attacks – could fuel electoral violence.

Bleblocoula Sylvain (foreground) lost eight members of his family during a March raid in Diboke, Ivory Coast. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, 72, of the Unity Party, who jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, is seeking a second term of office. The incumbent president is running against 15 presidential candidates, including one from the Congress for Democratic Change, which initially earned more votes than her in 2005 (she later won in a runoff).

There is no credible polling in the West African nation, but observers expect the race will be close, potentially resulting in a runoff in early November.

The campaign period has been marked with divisive rhetoric and talk of vote stealing that some observers have warned could spill over into violence depending on the result.

Last year’s disputed election in Ivory Coast sparked a conflict between forces loyal to ousted President Laurent Gbagbo and his successor, Alassane Ouattara, that claimed an estimated 3,000 lives and sent a flood of refugees into Liberia. Liberian mercenaries were also recruited into the fighting, and there are reports that Ivorian Gbagbo supporters have resettled on the Liberian side of the border.

Corinne Dufka, a senior West Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW), said that while she believed Liberians were committed to maintaining peace, it was important to remember the extent to which past conflicts “have reverberated across each country’s porous borders, causing significant flows of arms, combatants and refugees, and untold human suffering.”

Thomas Kahn, an immigration official stationed at the Behai border crossing in Grand Gedeh County, in eastern Liberia, recommended that the government double the present number of security forces in order to prevent the cross-border trafficking of small arms. He also noted that during the election some security forces would be called away from the border to man polling stations elsewhere in the county.

“Over the past months there has been a problem in Ivory Coast, so we need more manpower at the border now,” Kahn said. “It is a security risk.”

Jerry Zeah, the town chief of Behai, also said he believed there was insufficient security in the area to ensure the safety of residents.

Last month, HRW documented an attack allegedly perpetrated by Gbagbo supporters based in Liberia that killed 23 people in two villages located 25 kilometres south of the Ivory Coast town of Tai. The attack was similar to a cross-border raid carried out in July that killed at least eight people in Ivory Coast.

According to HRW, the attacks are believed to have been launched by youth from Ivory Coast “who served as pro-Gbagbo militiamen during the country’s six-month post-election conflict” and are now based in Liberia. The victims, meanwhile, “tended to support” Ouattara.

Women and children were among the victims in both attacks.

In a statement detailing the July attack, HRW said: “One witness described attackers sticking a gun barrel in the mouth of a man whom they’d trapped; they then shot him. A Burkinabé man living in the area was found with his throat slit.”

“These armed groups appear determined to wreak havoc on a population that has already suffered greatly from Côte d’Ivoire’s deadly post-election crisis,” said Daniel Bekele, HRW’s Africa director. “United Nations peacekeeping missions in Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia need to assist state authorities in preventing more bloodshed.”

Despite this call from HRW, Napoleon Viban, the acting head of the Liberia peacekeeping mission in Zwedru, Grand Gedeh’s capital, said it was up to Ivory Coast authorities to investigate the attacks – even though the perpetrators are believed to be in Liberia.

Beyond the logistical challenges of an investigation by Ivory Coast authorities, HRW said there was a chance the Ivorian armed forces would commit rights abuses during the course of an investigation, noting that torture and extrajudicial killings were “common during the conflict.”

Several residents of Tai, the Ivory Coast town located near the site of the attacks, said that after the Jul. 18 attack, Ouattara forces “detained a local pro-Gbagbo village leader and fired between his legs during questioning.”

“Côte d’Ivoire’s armed forces must ensure that those who commit attacks, whatever their political affiliation, face their victims before a court of law, and not be subject to the summary executions that too often marked the Ivorian crisis,” Bekele said.

Concerns about the tactics of Ouattara’s forces resonate with Bleblocoula Sylvain, a 28-year-old Ivory Coast refugee who now lives in the Grand Gedeh town of Tuzon. Sylvain lost eight members of his family during a March raid in Diboke. He said he had no intention of returning to Ivory Coast under Ouattara.

“People loyal to him still hold arms,” Sylvain said. “He’s the one to rule the country, but he killed a lot of people. I don’t ever think this government will maintain peace.”

HRW said the border “is notoriously difficult to monitor, because of its length and the thick vegetation that marks the region.” The statement noted that both the U.N. and the Ivory Coast government had agreed to send more forces to the area following the Sep. 15 attack.

Viban noted that the mission was “part of the joint border patrol.” He also said that while the primary goal of the mission was to bolster the capacity of Liberian security forces, the mission “will always intervene in line with its mandate.”

He said that while he believed the situation at the border remained “calm,” even in light of the recent attacks, in the event of electoral violence the U.N. in Liberia will “work with the government to quickly come in when human lives are at stake.”  

Excerpt:

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
MONROVIA , Oct 9 2011 (IPS)

As the Norwegian Nobel Committee named Liberian President Ellen Johnson- Sirleaf a joint winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, opposition party supporters were flooding the streets of Monrovia to demand that she be voted out of office in the upcoming election.

Opposition party supporters demanded that Nobel Peach Prize winner Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf be out of office. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

The Nobel committee announced that the prize would be divided into three equal parts. Leymah Gbowee, a Liberian peace activist who organised a women’s movement calling for an end to civil war in the West African nation, was also named a winner, as was Tawakkul Karman, a Yemeni journalist and activist who has played a prominent role in that country’s Arab Spring protests.

But in Monrovia, the focus Friday was squarely on Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state who is running for a second term in a vote scheduled for Oct. 11. The prize was awarded on the same day that supporters of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), the leading opposition party, marched in support of political change.

In a statement, the Nobel committee said Johnson-Sirleaf had “contributed to securing peace in Liberia, to promoting economic and social development, and to strengthening the position of women.”

On the contrary, the CDC has consistently accused Johnson-Sirleaf of bringing war to the country, citing her early financial support of former President Charles Taylor, now on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at The Hague.

Taylor launched a coup in 1989 that plunged Liberia into 14 years of civil conflict that claimed more than 250,000 lives. In 2009, Liberia’s South Africa-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission report included Johnson-Sirleaf on a list of 49 politicians who should be barred from politics for 30 years owing to their ties to warring factions. Johnson-Sirleaf issued an apology to the nation shortly thereafter, saying she only supported Taylor in the hope that he would overthrow dictator Samuel Doe.

In an interview late last month, however, CDC presidential candidate Winston Tubman highlighted the president’s ties to Taylor, saying: “The government that we are seeking to replace is a government that oppressed the people. It is a government that brought war.”

Johnson-Sirleaf, a Harvard-educated economist who has previously worked for the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank, has been accused by her opponents of courting international favour at the expense of voters back home.

Speaking to IPS by phone on Friday, Tubman said the prize was further evidence that the views of the international community did not match those of Liberians.

“If the international community feels that she deserves such a prize, they should watch out for today’s march, because the CDC is prepared to vote her out of power peacefully,” he said.

TQ Harris, a former independent presidential candidate, struck a similar note in an SMS text message sent to supporters and journalists. “This explains why Liberians have yet to get a war crimes court… the international community has an agenda that is not in line with ours,” he said.

Thousands of CDC supporters turned out for Friday’s rally marking the end of the party’s campaign, dancing and drinking in the streets, shouting slogans and brandishing banners. While waiting inside Antoinette Tubman Stadium for the arrival of Tubman and his running mate, international football star George Weah, 36-year-old voter David Mzor described why he thought the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Johnson-Sirleaf was inappropriate.

“I don’t think President Sirleaf deserves it because she has not been able to reconcile the Liberian people. She’s not a reconciler,” he said. “She helped to put our future way back. That was not the right way to remove (dictator Samuel) Doe. There were other alternatives.”

Thomas Queayahn, 19, who was also among the CDC supporters in the stadium, agreed. “She was a fighter before she was a leader,” he said of the president. “She brought war to the country.”

The president’s many supporters take the opposite view, praising her for restoring peace and stability against significant obstacles.

As he watched the CDC marchers go by Friday from his stall on Benson Street, petty trader Prince Worzie hailed the president as a peacemaker. “She has brought peace to Liberia,” he said, adding that he also commended her efforts to promote women within her government. “That alone justifies that indeed she should deserve the award.”

John Ballout, a senator with Johnson-Sirleaf’s ruling Unity Party and a member of her campaign team, said the attempt to paint her as an instigator of the war was a political tactic on the part of opposition leaders “who want to shift the discussion.”

“Yes, she has been very supportive of all of the struggles to resist dictatorship in this country,” he said. “It’s not that she’s been supporting conflict or war – she’s been supporting resistance.”

*With additional reporting by Stephen Binda and Saye Messah

Excerpt:

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
BONG COUNTY, Liberia , Oct 6 2011 (IPS)

It seems all of Liberia is paying close attention to the campaign for the Oct. 11 presidential and legislative elections. But Sekou Camara is one exception.

That is because when Camara, a member of Liberia’s Mandingo Muslim ethnic group, went to register to vote back in January, officials with the National Elections Commission (NEC) accused him of being Guinean based on the spelling of his surname. Liberians typically spell the name “Kamara”.

“Immediately when I completed spelling my name they told me that I was from Guinea since in fact my last name begins with ‘C’ and the Liberian Kamara begins with ‘K’,” Camara, who lives in central Liberia’s Bong County, recalled recently.

Though he lived in Guinea for part of Liberia’s devastating 14-year civil conflict, which ended in 2003, he said he never became naturalised there and thus retains his Liberian citizenship. “I am a Liberian and not a citizen of Guinea,” he said.

The Electoral Reform Law of 2004 empowered officials in this West African country to take measures to facilitate the registration of voters who were displaced by the war. However, the language of the law indicates that these measures were limited to the 2005 elections.

Under the 2010 voter registration regulations, Liberian voters can present an array of documents, including a passport, a birth certificate or an old voter card, when registering. If these documents are unavailable, alternate steps include enlisting the sworn testimony of two other registered voters or a Liberian traditional leader.

In Ganta, a city in Nimba County in north Liberia, directly across from the Guinean border, Mohammed Karnay, a 29-year-old Mandingo, had an experience similar to Camara’s. He said that when he went to register, NEC officials became suspicious of his speech. Mandingoes often do not speak Liberian English (English peppered with Liberian slang that is sometimes indiscernible to English speakers), preferring to communicate in their tribal dialect, Mandingo.

“They told me to bring along my documents or someone to identify me as a Liberian citizen,” Karnay said. “I was unable to bring in my documents due to the fact they were all destroyed during the war. So I brought in my uncle, Lassana Karnay, who came and told them that I was a Liberian citizen born in Lofa County. Yet still they denied me.”

An untold number of Mandingo Muslims in Liberia were barred from registering to vote on dubious grounds this year, according to Korkesi Jabateh, the Muslim youth leader in Nimba County. “Many of our citizens were denied during the process,” Jabateh said. He acknowledged, though, that coming up with numerical estimates was difficult – in part because rejected voters did not always report their cases.

In an August report, the International Crisis Group (ICG) called on officials to address such allegations. “The government and NEC should engage with Muslim leaders to defuse tensions that erupted when some persons with Muslim names were not allowed to register on grounds that they were Mandingoes and thus not Liberian,” the report said. “The Muslim community, particularly the youth, is increasingly bitter over this recurrent ‘institutionalised’ discrimination against it.”

But NEC officials say the registration process went smoothly, and that they frequently caught non- Liberians trying to register to vote. “I am aware that there are certain parts of Liberia, certain border areas, that are considered to be problem areas for voter registration,” said Samuel Cole, NEC’s director of civic and voter education. “During voter registration, people who were not Liberians in some cases crossed over to register.”

He added that NEC’s screening practices “did not target any particular tribe.”

“As far as I know, there is not a particular tribe that will say they have been marginalised,” he said.

Cole said he did not believe that NEC would act on the ICG’s recommendation to reach out to Mandingoes. “I try as much as possible to take ethnicity out of voter registration,” he said. “In terms of voter registration, I do not want to target a particular ethnic group.”

In Saniquellie, the capital of Nimba, NEC magistrate Princeton Monmia said his staff had an especially difficult time registering Mandingo voters because Mandingoes from Liberia are quite similar to Mandingoes from Guinea, and vice versa. By contrast, he said, the ethnic groups of Gios and Manos who live in Liberia are different from their counterparts in Guinea – in large part because they speak Liberian English.

“We have Mandingoes in Liberia. We have Mandingoes in Guinea,” Monmia said. “If we want to register Mandingoes we have to make sure.”

Monmia said NEC officials worked with immigration officials to ensure that Mandingoes attempting to register had not crossed the border from other countries.

The NEC magistrate said that he had no Mandingoes on staff at the time of voter registration, which complicated screening efforts. “I do not speak any Mandingo,” he said.

If Mandingoes did not have documentation proving they were born in Liberia, they were asked to bring in relatives, friends or neighbours who could vouch for them, he said. If they were born in another county and could not bring anyone to testify on their behalf, they were interviewed by immigration officials.

Monmia said the questions immigration officials asked would-be voters were not standardised, but rather varied from case to case. “We can use all means to elicit facts,” he said.

In the end, he said, those involved in voter registration did their job “perfectly”.

“Those people who were denied, they were not Liberians,” he said. “They were denied because they could not answer questions that people asked them.”

Excerpt:

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
MONROVIA, Sep 28 2011 (IPS)

International justice advocates are worried that donors will deprive the International Criminal Court (ICC) of sufficient funding next year, hindering the court’s ability to fulfil an expanding mandate that will stretch from Kenya to Libya and potentially Ivory Coast.

In late July, the court proposed a 2012 budget of 159.45 million dollars, an increase of 13.6 percent over 2011. Maria Kamara, an outreach coordinator for the court, said the main drivers of the increase included the Libya investigation referred by the United Nations Security Council in February and “essential legal assistance for counsel for the defence and victims’ representatives.”

Even before the proposal was submitted, however, key donors were issuing calls for zero growth in the court’s budget. The Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), a collection of more than 2,500 civil society organisations, has said zero growth “would undermine the effectiveness of the court’s work and would curtail its ability to respond promptly to situations where crimes are committed.”

The ICC, which began operating in 2002, has to date undertaken six investigations into allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Kenya and Libya.

Last month, the court’s Committee on Budget and Finance, a subsidiary expert body that advises the court’s member states on the budgeting process, recommended a smaller 8.1 percent increase for the 2012 budget. The Assembly of States Parties, made up of the 118 nations that have ratified the court’s founding treaty, will weigh in on the budget in December.

Sunil Pal, head of the CICC’s legal section, told IPS that the most vocal proponents of zero growth in the ICC budget were Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, which are also the court’s biggest donors. CICC convenor William Pace said he expected that four or five other countries would support the large donors, while 10 or 20 would oppose them. The majority of the states parties, he added, are unlikely to take a position.

Pace said that among African countries, South Africa has reportedly emerged as the strongest opponent of zero nominal growth.

“Arrogant and unworkable”

When it comes to those pushing for zero growth, Pace accused the UK and France of “policy hypocrisy,” noting that both countries were adamant supporters of getting the ICC involved in Libya, a major source of its workload and budget increases. The U.N. Security Council voted 15 to zero to refer the Libya situation to the court in February. It was the first time that there had been a unanimous endorsement of an ICC investigation.

“The principle that the Security Council can ask international bodies to undertake expensive peace and security missions and then say, ‘Oh, but you have to pay for it,’ is an arrogant and unworkable principle,” Pace said.

He added that the reluctance of the UK and France to give more money to the court did not square with those countries’ willingness to fund the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya – at a cost that easily dwarfed any potential increase in their contributions to the ICC.

“The contradictions are intolerable between how governments treat military intervention costs, but when you get down to peace building and preventing these crimes they say, ‘Oh, we don’t want to pay for that’,” he said.

A spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), however, said the UK was “widely regarded as one of the ICC’s strongest supporters, both politically and financially.”

The spokesperson said the push for zero growth was “in line with our position on the budgets for other international institutions,” and added that the UK had asked for more information about potential increases at the ICC.

While the court has drawn criticism for what some perceive as slow progress, those calling for a budget increase argue that imposing zero growth would be counterproductive.

“Certainly there are ways in which the court could arguably improve efficiency, but it is for the judges to determine the way in which judicial processes should be conducted, not for bureaucrats in capitals interested in the budgetary bottom line,” said Carla Ferstman, director of Redress, a London-based organisation that helps victims of torture and related crimes obtain justice.

“The court has an obligation to be efficient and effective in the administration of justice – and certainly there is a lot of room for improvement,” Ferstman added. “But the fact that the court could be more efficient should not be confused or conflated with the issue of ‘zero growth’ – it is mixing apples and oranges.”

The FCO spokesperson said the UK would “never consider funding cuts that put at risk the court’s ability to carry out its core mandate.”

Stretched thin

The court is already seen as being stretched thin in a number of areas.

Redress issued a statement in July drawing attention to the fact that 470 victims were unable to participate in the confirmation of charges hearing for Callixte Mbarushimana, the Rwandan rebel leader accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Judges ruled that the applications would be left out because the court’s registry did not have the resources to process them by the deadline.

This problem has also occurred in the court’s two Kenyan cases, and Redress said almost 2,000 victims in total have been affected. “If this resource issue is not resolved, victim participation will become a meaningless paper promise,” Ferstman said.

An Aug. 17 document submitted by the CICC to the court’s Committee on Budget and Finance pointed to evidence of underfunding in the following areas: the Victims Participation and Reparations Section; the Office of Public Counsel for the Defence; the Public Information and Documentation Section; the Victim and Witnesses Unit; the Field Operations Section; and the Office of Internal Audit.

The court does have a contingency fund, but Christian Wenaweser, president of the Assembly of States Parties, said in a July interview with IPS that the fund would need to be tapped in response to the referral of the Libya situation. Due to a legal requirement that the fund not fall below seven million euros, Wenaweser said it would need to be replenished.

Wenaweser also called on the U.N. General Assembly “to take a specific decision regarding the full or partial reimbursement” of member states’ payments to the ICC.

Pace said the CICC agreed with the principle behind the idea, noting that the ICC’s founding treaty and the ICC-U.N. Relationship Agreement allow for it.

Excerpt:

As the International Criminal Court gears up to elect six judges and a new prosecutor, observers are warning that political rather than merit-based considerations could govern the evaluation of candidates.

The nomination period for the elections – which will determine replacements for six of the ICC’s judges and its chief prosecutor, the court’s most visible position – begins next month, with voting scheduled for December. But there are already signs that states parties to the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding treaty, will politicise the process.

At a January summit, the African Union suggested it would advocate for an African prosecutor, issuing a declaration that noted the “significant participation” of African countries in the court, as well as “the fact that there is no African heading any of the main organs of the institution.”

All of the ICC’s active cases involve crimes committed in Africa, a fact that has exposed the court to criticism from those looking to brand it a tool of the West. At the same time, Africa boasts more states parties to the Rome Statute than any other region.

Though the AU did not make an explicit push for a particular candidate, resolving to revisit the matter at a summit scheduled to begin Jun. 23, observers said it was no secret the body wanted an African to fill the shoes of current prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

William Pace, convenor of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, a group of more than 2,500 civil society organisations, said attempts to exert political pressure would likely not be confined to the election of a new prosecutor.

Historically, he said, the handling of elections for global bodies has been “extremely mediocre,” with “crude political considerations” dominating the process.

One of the potential long-term dangers of politicised elections at the ICC is that they could politicise the actual work of the court, Pace said. In the election for prosecutor, for instance, he said some countries could lend support to a candidate on the condition that he or she agree not to conduct investigations on their soil.

Brigid Inder, executive director of Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice, took issue with the notion that an AU endorsement would be inappropriate. “From our perspective the politicisation of the process isn’t coming from the African states, but from others who are saying if the Africans put up a candidate it will politicise the election,” she said.

“The issue isn’t if the AU endorses a candidate. The issue is why others are working hard to prevent the AU from endorsing a candidate and therefore ensuring there isn’t a strong African candidate who could viably contest the election for the next chief prosecutor of the ICC.”

Both Singh and Pace said the elections come at a time of rising prominence for the ICC, as evidenced by the U.N. Security Council’s unanimous referral of the Libya situation to the court in February.

Pace noted that as the various ad hoc tribunals – for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, for instance – wind down, the ICC is becoming “the primary if not the only international criminal court for the most terrible crimes in international law.”

The court must navigate this transitional period, he added, while undergoing an almost complete change in its leadership over the next year: along with the prosecutor and the six judges, elections will also be held in December for a new president and two vice presidents of the Assembly of States Parties; six members of the Committee on Budget and Finance; and a 21-member “Bureau”, the ASP’s executive committee. In early 2012, elections will be held for the ICC’s president and two vice presidents.

Replacing Moreno-Ocampo

The election of judges will take gender, geography and other considerations into account to produce a representative bench. There are no such requirements to consider when choosing the chief prosecutor and deputy prosecutors: the Rome Statute states only that they “shall be persons of high moral character, be highly competent and have extensive practical experience in the prosecution or trial of criminal cases.”

As such, Pace said any push for a specifically African prosecutor has no grounding in the statute. “There’s no requirement that there should be regional rotation on the position of the prosecutor. There’s no requirement that the prosecutor should come from the region where most of the situations that the court is dealing with are occurring,” he said.

Pace noted, though, that some of the potential candidates being floated for endorsement by the AU – including Ocampo’s Gambian deputy, Fatou Bensouda, who Pace termed “definitely a frontrunner candidate” – are “very highly qualified.”

Referring to Bensouda, Inder said, “It is not lost on many states, institutions and NGOs following this election, that the leading African candidate to date is a woman and people are wondering whether this is also a factor in the additional efforts being made this time around to prevent the AU from endorsing a candidate.”

The court has established a five-person search committee tasked with producing a shortlist of at least three candidates for chief prosecutor. During the December elections, the Rome Statute stipulates 114 states parties should attempt to reach a consensus decision. Failing that, secret ballot voting will occur.

In a May 18 letter to the search committee, HRW identified a range of desirable qualities for prosecutor candidates. Some of these – such as “demonstrated experience in working with other bodies or agencies” and “demonstrated experience in communicating effectively to a wide variety of constituencies” – underscored the group’s belief that as the ICC assumes a greater role on the global stage, the prosecutor “will likely be even more closely scrutinised and subject to criticism, both legitimate and unjustified.”

Singh emphasised that the mounting pressure on the court to start completing cases – the first trial, that of Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga, is scheduled to enter closing arguments in August – will leave the new prosecutor with little room for error.

“There’s been an emphasis placed on the importance of judicial institutions to deliver,” Singh said.

“That makes it more important that there’s someone at the helm who has the skills to meet the challenges that have emerged and will continue to intensify.”

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
NAIROBI, May 18 2011 (IPS)

At about 9 pm on May 10, British human rights lawyer Clara Gutteridge arrived at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport from Dar es Salaam, where she was investigating the arrests of Tanzanians accused of terrorism.

When she reached the visa counter, an official told her there was “a problem” with her passport, but that she could take care of it in a nearby office. Five minutes later she was being detained.

“A group of three or four of them came out and said, ‘You’re under arrest. Come with us,’” she recalled this week by phone from the UK. Gutteridge, a fellow of the Open Society Justice Initiative, was held overnight without food or water, and then deported.

Observers say the deportation could be part of a broader effort by East African governments to stifle investigations of counterterrorism operations – in particular those stemming from the July 2010 bombings in Uganda, which killed 76 people watching the World Cup final on big screens at a restaurant in Kampala.

(Kenyan immigration officials this week declined to explain exactly why Gutteridge was deported, demanding a written request for information; a Mar. 22 document given to Gutteridge and signed by Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang said only that her “presence in Kenya is contrary to national interest.”)

Regional clampdown

The clampdown on rights workers dates back to September 2010, when Ugandan authorities arrested Al-Amin Kimathi, executive coordinator of Kenya’s Muslim Human Rights Forum, after he travelled to Kampala to monitor a court hearing for suspects rounded up in the wake of the July attacks. The suspects included seven Kenyans who were extradited to Uganda in an operation Kenya’s High Court has since deemed illegal.

Kimathi has been charged with terrorism, murder and attempted murder and remains in Ugandan custody. The case has been committed to Uganda’s High Court, but no trial has been initiated.

In December, Gutteridge herself was deported from Uganda after attempting to monitor bail hearings for the eight Kenyan suspects.

Then, in April, four Kenyan rights workers were barred from entering Uganda despite having arranged for a meeting with Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki. In that case, too, no explanation was given.

Rachel Nicholson, advocacy officer for the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project, said it was apparent that both the Kenyan and Ugandan governments “don’t want these cases looked at.”

“It’s worrying that this seems like an attempt to discourage other human rights defenders from properly investigating their concerns about how these cases are being handled,” she said.

Ben Rawlence, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, also expressed concern about the trend.

Referring to Gutteridge’s deportation from Kenya, he said, “I think it’s a very worrying development for human rights in East Africa when someone who is researching the flaws in the case against these terrorism suspects is deported for apparently doing her job.”

Kenya’s stained record

Kenya already has a poor record when it comes to the treatment of rights workers, Rawlence said, noting that “elements close to the security forces have previously threatened human rights defenders.”

He also pointed to the 2009 assassination of activists Oscar Kamau King’ara and John Paul Oulu. The two men, known for their investigations of alleged torture and killings by the police, were shot dead in central Nairobi in an attack that immediately sparked accusations of police involvement.

But Nicholson suggested that efforts to block investigations of recent counterterrorism operations marked a troubling shift in the Ugandan government’s handling of rights workers.

“We’ve found that the treatment of human rights defenders investigating these cases is not consistent with the Ugandan government’s past treatment of human rights defenders and is quite specific to these cases,” Nicholson said.

Rawlence said the response to the July attacks indicated collusion between the two countries.

This point was echoed by Gutteridge, who said it had become “increasingly obvious that there’s a high degree of Kenyan complicity in all of these misdemeanors.”

Going forward, both she and Nicholson said it was unlikely the deportations would succeed in discouraging rights workers from carrying out investigations – and suggested they could have the opposite effect.

“The fact that they are clearly so resistant to having any kind of light shone on what they’re doing and the kind of abuses they’re committing is simply testament to the fact that something untoward is going on,” Gutteridge said.

Nicholson said rights workers “continue to be very concerned” about the treatment of the July 2010 bombing suspects, and contended that “the technical restrictions that have been placed on them will not be stopping them from following the case.”

Excerpt:

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
NAIROBI, Apr 29 2011 (IPS)

A decision to exclude crimes committed in the western city of Kisumu and the Nairobi slum of Kibera from a case against alleged organisers of violence following Kenya’s 2007 election could undermine the International Criminal Court’s effort to combat impunity in the East African nation, civil society groups have warned.

Judges ruled in March that ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo had failed to demonstrate that high-profile extrajudicial killings by police in the western city of Kisumu as well as killings, injuries and rapes carried out in the Nairobi slum of Kibera were part of a state policy involving three suspects linked to President Mwai Kibaki’s Party of National Unity.

The suspects – Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, Head of Public Service Francis Muthaura and former Police Commissioner Mohammed Hussein Ali – are currently facing crimes against humanity charges of murder, forcible transfer of population, rape, persecution and other inhumane acts related to violence in the Rift Valley. In a separate case, three other suspects are also facing charges of murder, forcible transfer of population and persecution.

The March ruling said Ocampo’s evidence provided “reasonable grounds to believe” that police “used excessive force, in particular live ammunition,” against residents of Kisumu, resulting in more than 60 deaths. Judges also said there was evidence indicating police “raided the slums of Kibera” multiple times, and that crimes were also committed there by the Mungiki criminal gang.

But because they were not satisfied with the connection between these crimes and a state policy or the suspects themselves, judges dismissed charges in both locations.

Credibility weakened

Stella Ndirangu, legal officer for the International Commission of Jurists in Kenya, said a failure to pursue charges related to Kibera would come as a shock to most victims there, especially in light of the fact that the slum had featured prominently in Ocampo’s initial filings.

“If there’s no form of accountability, the angle of trying to deter future occurrences sort of gets lost,” Ndirangu said.

Consolata Ngugi, 49, a resident of Kibera since 1994, was raped by three male supporters of Raila Odinga – who lost out on the presidency and is now prime minister – the day after the election was called in Kibaki’s favor. She said the ICC process, which she initially supported, would be meaningless if judges did not weigh evidence of crimes committed in the slum.

“The court is treating Kibera as a different place, but violence also took place here,” she said. “If the ICC is going to abandon Kibera, it’s a clear sign to Kibera residents that however much you kill one another the law will never catch up with you.”

The government acknowledged 1,220 deaths nationwide during the crisis, which lasted until late February 2008, according to Ocampo’s initial request to launch an investigation. But Pamela Akwede, head of the human rights office at Kibera’s Christ the King Catholic Church, said she believes more than 1,000 killings took place in Kibera alone.

Akwede said the exclusion of Kibera from the case against Kenyatta, Muthaura and Ali would amount to a final betrayal for victims who have already been mistreated by politicians and the police in the wake of the violence.

Whereas candidates were eager to rally support in the slum in the run-up to the December 2007 vote, they have made themselves scarce ever since, Akwede said.

And although police interviewed victims of the post-election violence, they invariably concluded that there was insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges. Some even told rape victims such as Ngugi “that they must have enjoyed” being assaulted, Akwede said.

“The poor people here have been used by the government of Kenya,” Akwede said, adding that she now discourages women from agreeing to interviews with police investigators.

Ngugi also accused the police and local courts of abdicating their responsibility to investigate the violence. She said she has identified her attackers, but that police have refused to find and arrest them, instead telling her to call in if she happens to see them.

“These men are drunkards,” Ngugi said, referring to her attackers. “They stay in pubs and nightclubs around here. I cannot go standing near bars and nightclubs every day in those areas searching for the people who destroyed my life.”

The ICJ’s Ndirangu said victims in Kisumu would be similarly disappointed if the case against Kenyatta, Muthaura and Ali focused only on the Rift Valley.

“With Kisumu, most of those events were captured on camera, especially when police were using force, so it’s unimaginable that [the perpetrators] would go scot-free,” she said.

Jelena Vukasinovic, associate legal outreach officer at the ICC, said Ocampo can present new evidence in advance of confirmation of charges hearings scheduled for September.

Ndirangu said that during a meeting earlier this month in The Hague, Ocampo urged civil society groups to forward relevant material to his office. “The message was that if you’ve got additional evidence, he’s ready to receive it,” she recalled.

Excerpt:

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
NAIROBI, Apr 14 2011 (IPS)

On its face, Kenya’s failed bid to defer International Criminal Court cases against alleged organisers of post-election violence in 2007-2008 was a story of changing positions. But to argue that either the U.S. or Africa has switched sides in the debate over the appropriate role of the ICC is too simplistic.

Kisumu barber David Mugo says the ICC cases should proceed and that lower-level perpetrators should be tried locally. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet

All six suspects face crimes against humanity charges of murder, forcible transfer and persecution. Three also face torture charges, and the other three also face charges of rape and other inhumane acts.

In advance of a Mar. 18 U.N. Security Council meeting addressing the issue, the African Union, which includes many countries that have long provided a crucial bloc of support for the ICC, took Kenya’s side.

Meanwhile, the United States, once accused by Human Rights Watch of “going to war” with the ICC, came out against the deferral bid, effectively killing its chances: after a closed-door meeting on Apr. 8, Security Council President Nestor Osorio of Colombia said members “did not agree on the matter,” and that it would be shelved “for the time being.” This endorsement of the court’s work followed the Feb. 26 Security Council resolution referring the situation in Libya to the ICC – the first time the U.S. had voted in favour of such a move.

Rights groups largely hailed U.S. support for the ICC, while lambasting Kenya’s – and by extension the AU’s – attempt to delay the post-election violence cases.

“We’re certainly glad to see statements like this that the US has been making,” Elizabeth Evenson, senior counsel for HRW’s International Justice Program, said in reference to criticism of the deferral bid by American diplomats. “Indeed, it will perhaps convince the Kenyan government that this is the wrong avenue, that this isn’t going to go anywhere and that there’s no point in pushing it further.” 

But analysts say it is simplistic to argue that either the U.S. or Africa has completely switched sides in the debate on the ICC. In fact, the U.S. embrace of the ICC has been partial at best, and it remains to be seen whether frustrations aired by some African governments are fully shared by their counterparts throughout the continent.

The Darfur question

American support for action by the ICC dates as far back as the March 2005 Security Council resolution referring the situation in Darfur, Sudan, to the court, says David Scheffer, who served as the first U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues during the administration of former President Bill Clinton. In that vote, the U.S. abstained instead of wielding its veto power, thereby allowing the referral to go forward.

Scheffer says, “The Obama administration has been increasingly supportive of the utility of the ICC in addressing critical accountability challenges in the world, and views the court’s work as often aiding US national interests.”

That does not mean, however, that the US is likely to grant the ICC jurisdiction over its own nationals by becoming a member any time soon. “We always knew the road to ratification would be a long one,” Scheffer said. 

While the U.S. backed action on Darfur, resistance came from Africa. After ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo requested an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in July 2008, the AU asked the Security Council to approve the same type of deferral Kenya sought more recently. In March 2009, however, the court issued an arrest warrant for Bashir on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, prompting calls for AU countries to withdraw from the Rome Statute which established the ICC.

Calls to withdraw from the ICC

Godfrey Musila, senior law lecturer at Kenyatta University in Nairobi and an expert in international law, says the rejection of the Darfur deferral bid made the AU “very unhappy.” He says calls for withdrawal are likely to be renewed if Kenya’s deferral bid meets the same fate as Sudan’s.

“The suggestion is that if the Kenyans fail to get a deferral – as I think they will fail – then you’re likely to see movement at the AU reawakening the call for African states to withdraw from the court,” he told IPS in March, adding that this would likely happen around the time of the body’s upcoming summit in July.

Speaking to reporters in Nairobi last month, Mahboub Maalim, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a seven-nation East African regional development organisation, hinted that Musila’s prediction of calls to withdraw from the ICC could have merit.

After accusing the Security Council of delaying a hearing on Kenya’s deferral bid, Maalim said: “From the tone of the AU Commission, I have heard members saying that they have ideological differences with the ICC. This tells clearly that the cases that are developing are being watched by the AU.”

Musila said a main reason Africa – which has more ICC member states than any other region – supported the court from the beginning was because leaders believed it would be immune from political influence. Therefore, he said, it makes sense that Security Council votes and discussions – and the politics that inform them – are at the root of recent AU complaints.

He said the unanimous Security Council vote on the Libya situation could reinforce impressions that the court is politically compromised. “It provides evidence, if you will, to African leaders who are saying that the Security Council only acts where it is in the interests of the permanent members of the Security Council,” he said, adding that many leaders believed the 2006 Israel-Gaza conflict also should have been referred to the court.

“You hear many African leaders saying, ‘This is not the court we wanted. We wanted a court that is apolitical,’” Musila said.

Court enjoys strong African support

Evenson said there was no evidence of a “monolithic” move away from the ICC in Africa. “We’ve seen before a couple of times in which it’s been threatened that African members of the ICC will withdraw in response to what has been perceived as not listening to AU positions,” she said.

She added that she doubted recent threats would translate into actual withdrawals by individual countries, saying they were likely more “useful as a matter of rhetoric.”  Referring to instances in which the ICC has drawn the AU’s ire, she said, “I think what they have in common is when you have an action that makes it more likely that someone in a position of power might be subject to these criminal processes, we see this kind of backlash.”

This argument rings true for Ken Wafula, chairman of Kenya’s National Council of NGOs, who dismissed IGAD – the membership of which includes Kenya and Sudan – as a collection of “perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes, potential suspects in their own countries and future victims of the court.”

And it’s not just African NGOs who have defended the ICC. At an Apr. 5 press event in Nairobi marking the 17th anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, George William Kayonga, Rwanda’s high commissioner in Kenya, suggested that support for the court on the continent remained strong.

Recalling the Kenyan government’s initial support for the post-election violence cases, he said: “Kenyans invited the ICC. Since they invited the ICC they have to respect that the ICC did not come to Kenya because they wanted to come. They were invited.”

Though he cautioned that the ICC might not effectively promote reconciliation on the ground, he credited the court with deterring atrocity crimes, saying it has created awareness. “It is a wake-up call to other leaders that if you get involved in this you will not get away with it,” he said.

As for concerns that the ICC is in the hands of major powers such as the US, Wafula says they are baseless. “The ICC’s an African court,” he says. “It has everything to do with Africa. Its creation was necessitated by atrocities committed by African governments against African citizens. It’s not a Western tool.”

Excerpt:

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
NAIROBI, Apr 11 2011 (IPS)

Two alleged organisers of violence around Kenya’s December 2007 elections delivered impassioned speeches during a raucous political rally in Nairobi on Monday, just days after an International Criminal Court judge advised them to refrain from inflammatory language.

Supporters of ICC suspect Uhuru Kenyatta at Apr. 11 rally Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

On Apr. 7, Judge Ekaterina Trendafilova said the ICC was concerned “that there are some movements towards re-triggering the violence in the country by way of using some dangerous speeches.”

The court has summoned six suspects in connection with the 2007-2008 violence, which claimed more than 1,000 lives. Trendafilova warned all six, who appeared at the ICC for the first time last week, that further use of inciting language could prompt judges to substitute the summonses with arrest warrants.

She was not the first to take issue with the language of some of the suspects. In the weeks leading up to the ICC appearances, as Kenyatta and Ruto staged a string of rallies as part of a nationwide “prayer tour,” concerns about the content of their speeches were raised by a number of civil society groups, as well as by former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi and former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Earlier this month, the National Cohesion and Integration Commission said it was investigating politicians who allegedly incited crowds while speaking as part of the  tour.

An Apr. 3 article in Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper referred to multiple examples of inciting statements made by Kenyatta. At a rally in Githunguri, he reportedly said: “Now that Raila keeps describing some of us as drunkards, do we go drinking with his wife? And now that he keeps telling us to go to The Hague, is that Hague his mother’s place? Is The Hague your mother’s place for you to keep singing about it?”

Kenyatta was also quoted as saying, “We don’t have a problem with the people of Nyanza [province], but with one man, and you know who he is” – an obvious reference to Odinga.

On Monday, though, the language employed by both Ruto and Kenyatta was decidedly tamer.

Ruto began with an appeal for peace, saying, “Never again shall a Kenyan lose his life or his property due to political competition.”

He allowed himself only one slight dig at Odinga, saying, “Kenya’s problems cannot be solved by parables,” a reference to a favoured rhetorical device of the premier’s.

Kenyatta followed in much the same vein, thanking the 5,000-strong audience gathered in Uhuru Park in downtown Nairobi – some of whom hoisted banners reading “President Uhuru” and “Welcome Back Our Hero Uhuru” – for their support and declaring, “I don’t want to speak with anger but with patience.”

Later, he said, “The international community should not meddle in Kenyan affairs. We have enough capacity to solve our problems.” This was a rebuke – albeit a subtle one – of Odinga’s proposal to bring in the Federal Bureau of Investigation or Scotland Yard to probe the post-election violence cases.

Not every speaker matched the suspects’ civility. Mohamed Ali Mohamud, a parliamentarian aligned with Ruto and Kenyatta, blasted Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement for complaining about alleged hate speech in a letter to the ICC, and vowed to write a letter of his own defending the suspects.

Two speakers later, Rafael Wanjala, a former MP, went so far as to place all blame for the 2007-2008 violence – which began after Odinga was declared the loser in a close race with incumbent President Mwai Kibaki – squarely at the prime minister’s feet.

“People fought because of Raila. Raila is a very dangerous man,” Wanjala said.

ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is currently pursuing charges against six suspects in two separate cases. All six face crimes against humanity charges of murder, forcible transfer and persecution. Three also face torture charges, and the other three also face charges of rape and other inhumane acts.

Following hearings scheduled for September, judges will decide whether to confirm the charges and commit the suspects to trial.

Excerpt: