Albert Kanga's plantain farm on the outskirts of Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

By Friday Phiri
ABIDJAN, Cote d'Ivoire, Jul 18 2016 (IPS)

Albert Kanga Azaguie no longer considers himself a smallholder farmer. By learning and monitoring the supply and demand value chains of one of the country’s staple crops, plantain (similar to bananas), Kanga ventured into off-season production to sell his produce at relatively higher prices.

“I am now a big farmer. The logic is simple: I deal in off-season plantain. When there is almost nothing on the market, mine is ready and therefore sells at a higher price,” says Kanga, who owns a 15 Ha plantain farm 30 kilometres from Abidjan, the Ivorian capital.

Harvesting 12 tonnes on average per hectare, Kanga is one of a few farmers re-writing the African story on agriculture, defying the common tale of a poor, hungry and food-insecure region with more than 232 million undernourished people – approximately one in four.

Albert Kanga on his plantain farm. Credit: Friday Phiri/IPS

With an estimated food import bill valued at 35.4 billion dollars in 2015, experts consider this scenario ironic because of Africa’s potential, boasting 60 percent of the world’s unused arable land, and where 60 percent of the workforce is employed in agriculture, accounting for roughly a third of the continent’s GDP.

The question is why? Several reasons emerge which include structural challenges rooted in poor infrastructure, governance and weak market value chains and institutions, resulting in low productivity. Additionally, women, who form the backbone of agricultural labour, are systematically discriminated against in terms of land ownership and other incentives such as credit and inputs, limiting their opportunities to benefit from agricultural value chains.

“Women own only one percent of land in Africa, receive one percent of agricultural credit and yet, constitute the majority of the agricultural labour force,” says Buba Khan, Africa Advocacy Officer at ActionAid.

Khan believes Africa may not be able to achieve food security, let alone sovereignty, if women remain marginalised in terms of land rights, and the World Bank Agenda for Global Food System sourcebook supports the ‘closing the gender gap’ argument.

According to the sourcebook, ensuring that women have the same access to assets, inputs, and services in agriculture as men could increase women’s yields on farms by 20-30 percent and potentially reduce the number of hungry people by 12-17 percent.

But empowering women is just one of the key pieces to the puzzle. According to the African Development Bank’s Feeding Africa agenda, number two on its agenda is dealing with deep-seated structural challenges, requiring ambition and investments.

According to the Bank’s analysis, transforming agricultural value chains would require approximately 280-340 billion dollars over the next decade, and this would likely create new markets worth 55-65 billion dollars per year by 2025. And the AfDB envisages quadrupling its investments from a current annual average of US 612 million to about 2.4 billion dollars to achieve this ambition.

“Our goal is clear: achieve food self-sufficiency for Africa in 10 years, eliminate malnutrition and hunger and move Africa to the top of agricultural value chains, and accelerate access to water and sanitation,” said Akinwumi Adesina, the AfDB Group President at the 2016 Annual Meetings, highlighting that the major focus of the bank’s “Feed Africa” agenda, is transforming agriculture into a business for farmers.

But even with this ambitious goal, and the colossal financial resources on the table, the how question remains critical. Through its strategy, the Bank sets to use agriculture as a starting point for industrialisation through multi-sectoral interventions in infrastructure, intensive use of agro inputs, mechanisation, enhanced access to credit and improved land tenure systems.

Notwithstanding these well tabulated interventions, there are trade-offs required to create a balance in either system considering the climate change challenge already causing havoc in the agriculture sector. The two schools of thought for agriculture development—Intensification (more yields per unit through intensive agronomical practices) and Extensification (bringing more land under cultivation), require a right balance.

“Agriculture matters for Africa’s development, it is the single largest source of income, food and market security, and it is also the single largest source of jobs. Yet, agriculture faces some enormous challenges, the most urgent being climate change and the sector is called to act. But there are trade-offs to either approaches of up-scaling. For example, extensification entails cutting more forests and in some cases, displacing people—both of which have a negative impact on Agriculture’s role to climate change mitigation,” says Sarwatt Hussein, Head of Communications at World Bank’s Agriculture Global Practice.

And this is a point that Ivorian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mamadou Coulibaly Sangafowa, stresses regarding Agricultural investments in Africa. “The emphasis is that agricultural investments should be climate-sensitive to unlock the opportunities especially for young Africans, and stop them from crossing the Mediterranean seeking economic opportunities elsewhere,” he said.

Coulibaly, who is also president of the African conference of Agricultural Ministers, identifies the need to improve specialised agricultural communication, without which farmers would continue working in the dark. “Farmers need information about latest technologies but it is not getting to them when they need it the most,” he said, highlighting the existing information gap, which the World Bank and the African Media Initiative (AMI) have also noted regarding media coverage of Agriculture in Africa.

While agriculture accounts for well over 60 percent of national economic activity and revenue in Africa, the sector gets a disproportionately small amount of media coverage, contributing less than 10 percent to the national economic and political discourse. And this underreporting has resulted not only in limited public knowledge of what actually goes on in the sector, but also in general, misconceptions about its place in the national and regional economy, notes the AMI-World bank analysis.

Whichever route Africa uses to achieve the overall target of feeding itself and be a net food exporter by 2025, Ivorian farmer, Albert Kanga has already started the journey—thanks to the World Bank supported West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme-WAAPP, which introduced him to off-season production techniques.

According to Abdoulaye Toure, lead agro-economist at the World Bank, the WAAPP initiative which started in 2007 has changed the face of agriculture in the region. “When we started in 2007, there was a huge food deficit gap in West Africa, with productivity at around 20 percent, but it is now at 30 percent, and two similar programmes in Eastern and Southern Africa, have been launched as a result,” said Toure.

Some of the key elements of the programme include research, training of young scientists to replace the older generation, and dissemination of improved technologies to farmers. With in-country cluster research stations set up based on a particular country’s potential, there is improved information sharing on best practices.

“With new varieties introduced and off-season irrigation techniques through WAAPP, I am now an example,” says Farmer Kanga, who does not only supply to big supermarkets, but also exports to international markets such as Italy.

He recalls how he started the farm named after his late brother, Dougba, and wishes “he was alive to see how successful it has become.”

The feed Africa agenda targets to feed 150 million, and lift 100 million people out of poverty by 2025. But is it an achievable dream? Farmer Kanga is already showing that it is doable.

Migrants looking down from the mountain behind the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in Morocco. Credit: Andrea Pettrachin/IPS

By Andrea Pettrachin
CEUTA, Sep 4 2015 (IPS)

In the middle of the mountains behind the border fence of Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in Morocco, and eight kilometres from the nearest Moroccan village of Fnideq, an uncertain number of migrants live in the woods. No one knows exactly how many they are but charity workers in Melilla, Spain’s other enclave in Morocco, say they could be in their thousands.

Ceuta is one of the main (and few) ‘doors’ leading from northern Africa to the territory of the European Union, and is a ’door’ that has been closed since the end of the 1990s, when the Spanish authorities started to build a tripe six-metre fence topped with barbed wire that surrounds the whole enclave, as in Melilla.

In the past, those waiting in the mountains for their turn to try to reach Spain had been able to build something resembling a normal life. They put up tents and at least were able to sleep relatively peacefully at night.Today, the migrants are forced to remain mostly hidden in small groups among the trees or in small caverns, and they know that all attempts to pass the Spanish border are almost certain to fail and end up with arrest by the Moroccan authorities

That all ended after 2012, when the Moroccan police started to burn down the camps and periodically sweep the mountainside, arresting any migrants they found, charged with having illegally entered the country.

These actions were the result of agreements between the Moroccan and Spanish governments, after Spain had asked Morocco to control migration flows.

The most tragic raid so far by the Moroccan police took place last year on Gurugu Mountain which looks down on Melilla. Five migrants were killed, 40 wounded and 400 removed to a desert area on the border with Algeria. According to the migrants, the wounded were not cured and were left to their own destiny.

Today, the migrants are forced to remain mostly hidden in small groups among the trees or in small caverns, and they know that all attempts to pass the Spanish border are almost certain to fail and end up with arrest by the Moroccan authorities.

They live, in their words, “like animals” and when speaking with outsiders are clearly ashamed by their condition, apologising for being dirty and badly-dressed.

The first thing many of them tell you in French is that they are students and that before having to leave their countries they were studying mathematics, economics or engineering at university.

Many of them are from Guinea, one of the countries most seriously affected by the Ebola epidemic, others come from Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, all countries characterised by political turmoil of various types.

All of them have been forced to live in these woods for months or even years, waiting for their chance to pass the border fence.

The statistics show that some of them will certainly die in their attempts to reach Spain – either on the heavily fortified fences which encircle the enclaves or out at sea in a small boat or trying to swim to a Spanish beach.

Some of them will finally make it to Spain, perhaps after five or six failed attempts. In that case they will have overcome the first hurdle, escaping the “push-back operations” by the Spanish Guardia Civil, but they will still face the possibility of forced repatriation, particularly if they come from countries with which Spain has a repatriation agreement.

Many of them, however, will finally give up and decide to remain somewhere in Morocco, destined to a life of continuous uncertainty due to their irregular position in the country. You can meet them and listen to their stories in the main Moroccan cities, especially in the north. In most cases, they had escaped death in their attempts to reach Spain and do not want to risk their lives any longer.

Meanwhile a report on ‘Refugee Persons in Spain and Europe” published at the end of May by the non-governmental Spanish Commission for Refugees (CEAR), denounces how sub-Saharan migrants are dissuaded from seeking asylum in Spain, even if coming from countries in conflict such as Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo or Somalia, once they realise that they are likely to be forced to remain for months in a Centre for Temporary Residence of Immigrants (CETI) in Ceuta or Melilla.

In Melilla, for example, those who apply for asylum cannot leave the enclave until a decision has been taken on their application. Unlike Syrian refugees whose application takes no more than two months, CEAR said the average time to reach a decision for sub-Saharan Africans is one and a half years.

The CEAR report is only one of a long list of recent criticisms of the Spanish government’s migration policies from numerous NGOs and international organisations.

The main target of these criticisms has been the Security Law (Ley de Seguridad Ciudadana) passed this year by the Spanish Parliament with only the votes of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party. The aim was to give legal cover to the so called devoluciones en caliente, the “push-back operations” against migrants carried out by the Spanish frontier authorities in Ceuta and Melilla in violation of international and European law.

On the Spanish mainland, said the CEAR report, migrant’s right of asylum is seriously undermined by the bureaucratic lengths of application procedures and the political choices of the Spanish authorities.

Calls from CEAR and other NGOs to end “push-back operations” seem very unlikely to be taken into consideration soon by the Spanish government and Parliament, in view of the general elections later this year.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Spanish radar works silently and ceaselessly from the top of Mount Hacho overlooking Ceuta, identifying migrants trying to reach the enclave, but many of the inhabitants of the area will tell you that they have never seen the enormous fences that stand in the middle of the hills just four or five kilometres away from the city centre. Credit: Andrea Pettrachin/IPS

By Andrea Pettrachin
CEUTA, Spain, Jun 3 2015 (IPS)

A few kilometres before the border between the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and Morocco, a sign informs passers-by that this outpost of Spain on African soil stands in a privileged position for those who wish to observe the annual migration of birds across the Strait of Gibraltar, their shortest route from Africa to Europe.

At the border itself, huge fences have been erected to block the daily attempts of human migrants seeking to escape hunger, despair and often conflict, a phenomenon that the people of Ceuta are less proud to advertise and about which they prefer silence.

That silence was dramatically broken at the beginning of May when a border control X-ray machine detected Abou, an eight-year-old boy from Cote d’Ivoire, inside a suitcase being carried into the Spanish enclave.

That was only the most recent of a number of (more or less ingenious) strategies used by migrants amassed in the Moroccan woods next to the Spanish border to try to enter the so-called ‘Fortress Europe’.“What strikes the visitor most about Ceuta is its incredible contradictions. The city, with its population of just over 80,000 people living in 18.6 square kilometres and proudly Spanish since 1668, gives the idea of wanting to live as if the migrants and their attempts to reach the enclave do not exist”

Ceuta is one of the main (and few) ‘doors’ leading from northern Africa to the territory of the European Union, and is a ’door’ that has been closed since the end of the 1990s, when the Spanish authorities started to build two six-metre fences topped with barbed wire – complete with watch posts and a road running between them to accommodate police patrols in case of need – that surrounds the whole enclave (as in the other Spanish enclave in Africa of Melilla).

Even if they do not catch the attention of the media as in the case of Abou, every day Ceuta is the scene of young African migrants, almost all aged between 15 and 30, trying to reach Spanish territory in ways that are as, if not more, dangerous than the one chosen by Abou’s father.

The vast majority of them attempt to do so by sea, mainly in dinghies or hidden under the inflatable boats usually used by children on the beach. In February 2014, 15 Africans died  trying to swim around the fence, when border guards fired rubber bullets at them in the water. Others attempt the border crossing hidden in secret compartments under cars, and some even try scaling the fences.

What strikes the visitor most about Ceuta is its incredible contradictions. The city, with its population of just over 80,000 people living in 18.6 square kilometres and proudly Spanish since 1668, gives the idea of wanting to live as if the migrants and their attempts to reach the enclave do not exist.

On one of the days that Abou was capturing the headlines of media around the world, the main news reported on the website of one of the enclave’s two newspapers was the results of an opinion poll on upcoming administrative elections.

The “Centre for Temporal Stay of Immigrants”, where all migrants that manage to enter the enclave are accommodated, is an enormous structure which is incredibly hidden and impossible to be seen from any point in the city and from the hills behind it.

Spanish radar works silently and ceaselessly from the top of Mount Hacho overlooking Ceuta, identifying migrants trying to reach the enclave, but many of the inhabitants of the area will tell you that they have never seen the enormous fences that stand in the middle of the hills just four or five kilometres away from the city centre.

The enclave, described by the Lonely Planet travel guide as looking like a “grand social experiment concocted by rival political systems” and a sort of “cultural island”, is unique from a demographical point of view in that 50 percent of the population is Moroccan or of Moroccan origin.

The city is divided into a sort of well-established and quite rigid “caste system”.

The first and richest group is that of the Spanish, generally very conservative, very religious and devoted to traditions. The Popular Party has governed the city for decades and mostly opposes any change in the status quo – thus, for example, the Arabic language is not taught in schools.

The second group is that of the “Moroccan Ceutans”, sometimes Spanish citizens with Moroccan origin, in other cases Moroccan citizens with regular residence and work permits. Many of them have adopted the Spanish lifestyle and speak Spanish better than Moroccan Arabic but most of them respecting the religious precepts of their fathers.

Some of these “Moroccan Ceutans” have accumulated huge amounts of money thanks to the flourishing illegal smuggling of goods across the border and live in the most elegant and beautiful houses of the city, while others – many others – live in the degraded district of El Principe, where friction with the Spanish population is sometimes serious.

This latter sub-group contains a small but significant number of stateless children, born in the Spanish enclave of Moroccan parents who, mainly as a consequence of expiry of their residence permits having left them in an illegal position in Spanish territory, have never had the possibility to register the births of their children in Morocco.

None of these children have access to school, even if Spanish law has established the right to education for all the children in Spanish territory, irrespective of their nationality or legal position.

The third group is that of the so-called transfronterizos, Moroccan citizens residing mainly in the nearby Moroccan village of Fnideq who cross the border every day to work in the enclave city or, more often, to buy and sell goods in the black market.

They can be seen every day in the Poligono area next to the border post, carrying enormous packs of goods on their shoulders to be sold on the other side of the border. Police on both sides observe this continuous movement of people in silence – under an agreement signed by the Moroccan and Spanish governments in the 1960s, goods that a person is able to carry on the shoulders are exempt from customs duties.

A fourth group is that of the “black people”, the “caste” that the city tries to ignore and hide, not considering that they are the source of its major wealth – the funds that are assigned to the local authorities by the Spanish state and the European Union every year – and that their presence in fact provides many jobs in the public and security sectors.

Ceuta has always been and continues to be above all a military outpost. The number of police, guardia civil and soldiers patrolling or simply passing through the few roads of the enclave is impressive, as is the number of military training exercises that take place in the enclave, but just a few hundred meters beyond the border post and the Poligono is what appears to be part of another world.

The tiny village of Benzù sums up the contradictions of the whole enclave. Situated at the end of the beautiful coastal road in the western part of the enclave, it is the last Spanish establishment before the northern frontier post, and has been closed to the passage of people for many years.

With its beautiful sea and coloured houses facing the Spanish coast on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar, the village would not be out of place on a Greek holiday island. However, two hundred metres beyond the village, the presence of the last pillars of Ceuta’s border fences contaminate the crystalline water of the bay of Beliones.

The sea is discretely but constantly patrolled by the rubber boats of the army and police of both Spain and Morocco. The distance between the last Spanish houses and the first houses of the Moroccan village of Beliones is only of a few metres, divided by the iron and steel of the two fences covered with the barbed wire. You bump into them walking along the small road of the village, between a bakery and a small shop.

Nobody is outside, the silence all around is deafening. Groups of midges cross the border undisturbed without having to show passports to the border authorities. Three metres beyond, the beginning of another country, another time zone, another culture.

Looming over the landscape is Jebel Musa, the so-called Mujer Muerta (Dead Woman), a spectacular rocky mountain constantly covered by clouds that are constantly scurrying as if to compensate the slowness of the human movements blocked by the fences. Here, the spectre of death, the death that many people have met trying to cross this border, lingers even in the name of the mountain.

The Moroccan woods behind the village of Beliones are populated by groups of monkeys which, before construction of the border fences, periodically reached the hills of the Spanish enclave. A small group of monkeys still lives, however, in Ceuta’s “San Amaro” park not far from the city centre – closed in a cage.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The wife of former president Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast will serve jail time for inciting election violence in the 2011 post-election crisis.

Simone Gbagbo was found guilty this week of “disturbing the peace, forming and organising armed gangs and undermining state security,” according to her defence lawyer, Rodrigue Dadje. The sentence of 20 years was twice as long as prosecutors had sought.

Earlier, it appeared that she would receive a lesser sentence than she would have at the International Criminal Court (ICC) where her husband is now on trial for similar crimes. The Alassane Ouattara government refused to send her to The Hague, saying she would get a fair trial at home.

Mrs Gbagbo, 65, who may also be called by the ICC for suspected crimes against humanity, was tried along with 82 other allies of ex-President Laurent Gbagbo.

“I don’t know exactly what the concrete actions are that I am being accused of,” Mrs. Gbagbo said when the hearing began, insisting also that her husband Laurent Gbagbo was the legitimate winner of a 2010 presidential election that sparked five months of violence.

Scuffles broke out outside the courtroom with her opponents shouting “Murderers!” and her supporters shouting back “Liars!”

The court also ruled that her civil rights will be suspended for a period of 10 years. The former president’s son, Michel Gbagbo, was also convicted and sentenced to five years in jail.

Pascal Affi-N’Guessan, President of Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party, and one-time prime minister, received an 18-month suspended sentence. Last month his name was officially removed from the U.N.’s sanctions list despite his “obstruction of the peace and reconciliation process, and incitement to hatred and violence.”

Ivory Coast’s brief 2011 civil war was sparked by Laurent Gbagbo’s refusal to step down after a disputed election backed by the international community. Violence erupted between supporters of the former president and Alassane Ouattara, now president. Some 3,000 people died in the melee which reached up into rural areas on the north.

The ex-first lady said she had been insulted and humiliated by the prosecution, which, she said, had failed to prove her guilt.

Still, “I’m prepared to forgive. I forgive because, if we don’t forgive, this country will burn, she said.

Mr Gbagbo is currently awaiting trial at the ICC, accused of crimes against humanity for his suspected role in orchestrating the violence.

Treichville is a thriving market in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, where plastic bags remain the sole way of packaging food. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
ABDIJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Sep 26 2014 (IPS)

In the middle of downtown Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, the aisles of a thriving supermarket are full of customers. But as they line up to pay for their items, there is one line to a cashier’s till that remains empty. It’s the “green cash register”, where the cashier does not provide plastic bags as this supermarket tries to implement a green policy. 

“People do not find it convenient to bring their own bags. But they are often angry that they have to line up while nobody comes here [to the green cash register],” the cashier tells IPS.

Increasing environmental consciousness is not the sole reason for Ivorian shops adopting green policies: the government has adopted new laws that will affect consumers.

Each year, Côte d’Ivoire produces 200,000 tonnes of plastic bags of which 40,000 go directly into the trash. Less than 20 percent of this plastic is recycled.

In this West African nation, the pressure is growing to find alternatives to plastic shopping bags — which have become an environmental curse. In several of the city’s neighbourhoods, used plastic bags clog gutters and float on the lagoon, causing floods, sanitation problems and health hazards.

Côte d’Ivoire has been choking on its plastic bags. But as the government tries to find solutions, consumers still need to adapt their habits to the changing regulations.

Solving the environmental disaster

In May 2013, the Ivorian government announced a ban on several types of plastic bags. It was meant to prohibit the production, importation, commercialisation, possession and the use of any non-biodegradable plastic bags made of lightweight polyethylene, or similar plastic derivates with a thickness of less than 50 microns.

Already, eight African countries are doing the same. It is an initiative that started in Rwanda and South Africa in 2004, with the two nations deciding to levy extra taxes on plastic bags. Other countries that have banned plastic bags are Botswana, Eritrea, Kenya, Mauritania, Tanzania and Uganda.

But pressure from the plastic industry forced Côte d’Ivoire to back down and to postpone the ban until this August, while trying to find solutions to the industry’s concerns. The government could not simply ignore 7,500 jobs and an industry worth about 50 billion CFA (97 million dollars).

The ban was only applied in August, which allowed the industry enough time to produce biodegradable bags and develop alternatives.

The government also tried to ensure that the market was ready for the transition.

The industry has also had more time to invest in producing bio-degradable bags and more effective recycling infrastructure.

“Our objective is to, on a long-term basis, reduce and replace all bags with reusable bags, and to orient consumers about other ways of carrying merchandise, like [using] cloth bags and baskets.

“If the industry picks up, it will generate long term-profits of annually 17.1 billions CFA [33 million dollars] and will create 1,900 jobs,” explained Ivorian Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan at the beginning of September.

Changing habits

In Treichville Market, one of the busiest commercial areas of the economic capital of Côte d’Ivoire, the sellers have other concerns.

“People do not have the money to buy an entire bottle of oil. So we divide small portions into plastic bags [to sell],” Mohammed Cissé, a small shop owner in one of Abidjan’s biggest markets, tells IPS.

“It is an economical problem, I think. People do not have the money to buy containers. Those plastic bags are cheap. Reusable boxes are expensive.”

For Cissé, having consumers reuse their plastic bags will mean he will save money since he currently covers the cost of the plastic bags he packages his oil in.

“But people will not understand this! I cover most of the cost of the plastic bags, which is about 10 CFA per bag [3 cents]. Since I give away hundreds of bags per day, I see the total cost,” he says.

In a country where almost half the population lives on less than two dollars per day, buying reusable bags is a challenge, says Cissé.

His neighbour, Jean-Marie Kouadio, is wary about the new bags.

“I have seen biodegradable bags. They are very weak. Where is the benefit if you have to use three bags instead of one?”

He tells IPS that ecological solutions are not available for the smaller bags that he uses to package oil and salt.

Further away, Awa Diabaté faces a different concern. Diabaté, 54, sells donuts on a street corner, right beside a heap of abandoned dirty plastic bags. She sees the point of the ban, but believes that the health concerns behind the ban will be a challenge if proper solutions are not found.

“The individual wrappings allows me to keep the donuts clean from dirt. Often, small kids come to buy food. If they do not carry the food in [the plastic], they will drop it on the ground.

“Reusing bags, means cleaning them. Many people will not take good care. I am pretty sure some will get sick from that,” she tells IPS.

Diabaté’s concerns are down to earth. But they reveal a reality difficult to ignore: plastic bags are essential to Ivorian daily life. And solutions need to fit that.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

Two health care workers clean their feet in a bucket of water containing bleach after they leave an Ebola isolation facility during an Ebola simulation at Biankouman Hospital in Côte d’Ivoire. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
KANDOPLEU/ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Aug 26 2014 (IPS)

The nurse carefully packs the body into a plastic bag and then leaves the isolation tent, rinsing his feet in a bucket of water that contains bleach. Then he carefully takes off his safety glasses, gloves and mask and burns them in a jerry can.

Behind a cordon, hundreds of people are watching, including Ivorian Health Minister Raymonde Goudou Coffie and several local media.

They face no risks even if the deadly virus kills up to 90 percent of the infected persons: there is no Ebola outbreak in Côte d’Ivoire. And the corpse is a mannequin. This is an Ebola simulation at the district hospital in Biankouma.

“We want to test our medical teams. And see what we can do to improve our reaction,” explains the health minister, a pharmacist by training who does not hesitate to provide her in-sights.

Schoolteacher Edinie Veh Gale is in the crowd watching the exercise. “It is not translated in Yacuba, the local language. So people around do not understand. But it is good though. At least, it piqued people’s curiosity and they will search for information,” she tells IPS in French.

While the attention on the epidemic that has now been declared “out-of-control” is focused on the West African countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria, unaffected countries in the region, like Côte d’Ivoire, are struggling to understand what to do keep the disease away.

While strict epidemiological-control measures have been applied, including closing borders and banning people travelling into  Côte d’Ivoire from countries where the disease is prevalent, the current outbreak has highlighted huge gaps in prevention methods.

Especially since some citizens refuse to submit to restrictive measures.

Until now, the previous Ebola outbreaks were contained in villages in Central Africa where distance and isolation were important factors in stopping the disease.

But the current wave that resulted in over 1,135 deaths — making it the worst Ebola outbreak ever — has spread to several urban centres. In the cities restrictive measures have been met with reduced success.

Susan Shepler, an associate professor at American University and a specialist in education and conflict, is back from six weeks of research in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Despite several measures adopted by authorities, she noticed that while there have been some developments in the population’s awareness, most people in those countries have a deep mistrust for government assistance.

“It is not simply a mistrust of the state. It is a mistrust of the system. People don’t see the boundaries of the state,“ Shepler tells IPS. She explains that citizens believe politicians enter government to enrich themselves, and they therefore do not think that the state could help them.

She says that trust has yet to be built as many people, especially those who reside in opposition strongholds, see Ebola as a government plot or a religious curse.

In Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, government services and trained medical workers are barely available in regions infected by Ebola.

So when heavily-equipped medical teams, often backed by foreign experts, go to affected areas, it has been difficult for those local communities to instantly trust them.

“Western media tends to present the crisis with a focus on frontline work and chaotic scenes. But what is missing, [that needs to be] understood, is everyday life. There is a rationale for citizens’ actions,” says Shepler.

Building trust beforehand

It is difficult to discern what are good practices to fight Ebola.

Côte d’Ivoire may not have any cases, but it is uncertain if this is because the country took the right approach to the disease or if it was simply a matter of luck.

But what is clear is that Côte d’Ivoire fears being the next site of the outbreak.

Around the country, the government has multiplied preventative measures.

Last March, it banned bush meat. And since then the government has adopted several measures to contain the epidemic, including implementing screening for the disease at borders and banning direct flights to affected areas.

Now, the government has recommended that people stop hugging and shaking hands, insisting that they comply with strict hygiene rules.

The government has made also several efforts to build the trust of its people by getting local authorities and medical staff that are know to local communities involved in education campaigns.

And citizen’s initiatives are also multiplying.

In a bank in Abidjan’s commercial district, a security guard gives a shot of hand sanitiser to any client using the banking machine. “It’s for your own health,” he says.

In front of the same bank, street hawkers who help drivers park their cars refuse to shake hands.

Social media has exploded with various initiatives, notably the #MousserpourEbola (#FoamingAgainstEbola) challenge, which is used to raise money and public awareness about Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Launched by a young blogger, Edith Brou, videos of Ivorians throwing a bucket of soap water on themselves have became viral. When one is nominated for the challenge, you are required to throw a bucket of soap water on yourself and distribute three bottles of hand sanitiser. They you don’t agree to the soap shower, then you have to distribute nine bottles of hand sanitiser.

“Ivorians play down everything through humour. In spite of the funny aspect of it, the message is forwarded and listened to. There are many actions like mine. We cannot only stand by. We are responsible for our lives,” she tells IPS.

In the village of Pekanhouebli, in the west of the country and close the the Liberian border, there is no electricity and no internet access. But in this village that strongly supports the opposition, a citizen’s committee has been created to mobilise the community against Ebola.

“We did not believe that Ebola was true. We thought it was a white man’s disease from cities when authorities came to us,”senior resident Serge Tian tells IPS. “But when we heard it on the radio, we realised it was true. And we started listening to the nurse who would visit the village.”

Tian does not shake hands with IPS as we leave — it’s because he now understands a bit more about how the disease is spread. And he knows why he should comply to these restrictive measures.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

Translator Serge Tian in village of Gueyede in south-west Côte d’Ivoire. He translates sub-prefect Kouassi Koffi’s message about the spread of Ebola in West Africa and how people can recognise the virus and avoid infection. Credit: Marc-Andre Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
GUEYEDE, Côte d’Ivoire, Aug 16 2014 (IPS)

The whole village of Gueyede in south-west Côte d’Ivoire gathers under the tattered roof of a shelter as the rain drizzles outside, and listens carefully as sub-prefect Kouassi Koffi talks.

“We are not allowed any complacency. You might not know Ebola. And it is better that you don’t,” says Koffi, the highest governmental authority of the area, through translator Serge Tian.

Koffi explains how one can contract the virus and how to recognise the basic symptoms of Ebola hemorrhagic fever.

Credit: Centres for Disease Control and Prevention

He has held hundreds of meetings like this since the first Guinean cases of Ebola appeared last March. He travels from village to village in the Tiobli region he is in charge of, often visiting the same village two, three or four times, to utter the same message.

After the stop at Gueyede, IPS will follow him in another village, to answer the same questions from locals with well-prepared lists.

“It is a lot of work. But I think the population gets the message as we discuss [Ebola],” Koffi tells IPS as he drives his SUV on a particularly bad road.

His peer sub-prefects and prefects hold the same meetings in other Ivorian regions. This West African nation has had no cases of Ebola yet. But the Liberia border is few kilometres away. And the epicentre of the current Ebola outbreak is not more than 100 kilometres in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

“We should not wait to have a first case of the illness to take measures. Public mobilisation is important as the state cannot be everywhere,” said the Health Minister Raymonde Goudou Coffie during her last press conference on Thursday, Aug. 14.

Two of out of the four countries hit by the current epidemic, now declared out of control by the World Health Organisation (WHO), share a border with Côte d’Ivoire. Nigeria is the fourth country in West Africa that has had cases of Ebola.

And many worry that Côte d’Ivoire will soon be the next country to be hit by the most severe outbreak of the illness since its discovery in 1976. So far, there have been more than 1,000 deaths and the number of infected people is expected to soon hit 2,000. However, WHO said Friday, Aug. 15 that those numbers were “vastly underestimated”.

Credit: Centres for Disease Control and Prevention

Moving fast to implement preventive measures

When the first cases appeared in Guinea last March, the Ivorian government took several preventive measures, including the creation of advanced detection centres, and a strict ban on bush meat — which is believed to be a vector of contamination for the Ebola virus.

For the inhabitants of Gueyede, it is a big deal to not eat bush meat. Most of their protein comes from it. They especially fancy grass-cutter, a big rodent. Giving up this popular delicacy has meant that Ivorians had to change their habits. But they did. And government has closed all bush meat markets in the area.

“At first, we thought Ebola was a joke — a rumour invented." -- Albertine Beh Kbenon, Gueyede villager

Nevertheless, locals still have to figure out what to eat and what not to eat. “We can eat fish. But we can’t eat bush meat. So can we eat crocodile?” asks Gueyede chief Bernard Gole Koehiwon.

Puzzled, the under-prefect redirects the question to the area nurse, Drissa Soro. “I’m not sure. But I think it is safe. I will check and come back to be sure,” Soro says.

Diet is not the sole concern, and is not enough to fight the spread of a disease that kills almost 90 percent of infected persons and which spreads mostly through body fluids.

At public meetings villagers learn what to do if someone seems to have the illness. But they mostly share their thoughts, try to figure out how the disease spreads, and to sift out the facts amid the rumours about the virus that spread very fast.

The sub-prefect has a difficult task explaining why it is dangerous to shelter a member of their family from Liberia. In Côte d’Ivoire, the ethnic groups here are split along the Liberia’s borders with families having members living in both countries.

In addition, 50,000 Ivorians are still sheltered in refuge camps in Liberia since the 2010-2011 electoral crisis here.

One lady at the meeting, who came back from Liberia few weeks ago, worries about who will take care of her old parents that she left in the refugee camp. She travelled home ahead of them to prepare the house for their return. The sub-prefect says that they are taken care of, but it is difficult to find the words to reassure her.

Involving communities

Changing diet and avoiding family members are difficult changes. But Ivorian authorities are betting that it is possible through peer education.

Once the under-prefect leaves, community leaders push the message. In each village, a coordination committee incorporating several members from all ages and genders is created to pursue the discussion.

“Those villages are very isolated. Some of them are not accessible by car,” explains sub-prefect Koffi. It would not be possible to contain an eventual pandemic without community support.

Nurse Soro agrees. “I am on alert since last March. Every time I see someone, I talk to him about Ebola. I try to see if there could be possible cases,” he tells IPS.

As there are no doctors in the area, Soro is the most qualified medical source for about 6,000 inhabitants. Even if he drives from village to village in his little motorcycle on muddy tracks, he does not have the time to see everyone.

“Community health aides are necessary. They know how to speak to their community. And they are able to maintain presence for me.”

Albertine Beh Kbenon is part of the coordination committee in Gueyede. “At first, we thought Ebola was a joke — a rumour invented,” she tells IPS.

She is now taking the threat seriously enough to go from door to door and to talk about it. She was herself first very sceptical of what authorities were saying. When the local and international media, especially radio, relayed the information, she realised that it was serious.

“In Liberia they took this as a joke. They believed the government was lying. This killed them. We don’t want this to happen here,” concludes Kbenon.

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

Prisoners at Saliakro Prison Farm in Côte d’Ivoire. Prisoners, who were selected on account that they are non-violent and condemned for short and medium term sentences, have a relative freedom to move within the gated farm. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
SALIAKRO/ABDIJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Aug 1 2014 (IPS)

François Kouamé, prisoner Number 67, proudly shows off a sow and her four piglets. Dressed in his rubber boots, he passes by two new tractors as he happily makes his way to a field where pretty soon cassava and corn plants will start growing. “Look at those sprouts. It is a lot of work!”

Being imprisoned in one of the world’s most impoverished country’s is far from an easy ride. But Ivorian authorities are searching for alternatives to the overcrowded prisons and malnourished prisoners here. And they just may have found the answer — in a farm.

The Saliakro Prison Farm, where Kouamé is currently serving out the remainder of his one-year prison sentence, is the first of its kind in Côte d’Ivoire. He was one of the first detainees to be sent here in December 2013.

The 21 buildings on the farm, built on a former summer camp, are to provide accommodation for 150 prisoners who have been sentenced for less than three years for non-violent crimes. Here they will learn new skills in farming.“Our objective is truly to make prison time an opportunity for a sustainable change in life.” -- Bernard Aurenche, country representative of Prisoners Without Borders

For Kouamé, being on a farm is a relief compared to the six months he spent in Soubré State Prison for cutting trees in a neighbouring cocoa plantation.

“We were sleeping four persons in a space that could contain only one person. And we were granted only a bowl of rice per day,” says the young man.

Now he eats three meals a day, and stays in a clean room with 16 other prisoners. Each man has his own bunk bed, a closet and plenty of space to move about in.

Mamadou Doumbia, 32, is serving a two-year sentence for stealing computers. The quiet and articulate man is relieved to be on the farm. He spent 11 months in Agboville prison, in Agnéby Region close to Abidjan, the country’s economic capital.

He reveals a dark portrait of life in Agboville prison. Rape, malnutrition and pests are some of the many things he says he witnessed.

“I feel like being human again,” he tells IPS.

Though life on the farm is no vacation. Inmates must wake up at 5:30 am and be ready for work no later than 7am. They work till 3pm, only taking a short break for lunch. Evenings are their own to do with as they will, but they have to be in their dormitories by 9pm.

Through the Saliakro project, Ivorian authorities and backers hope to improve inmate conditions, reduce costs and help reintegration.

Overpopulation and malnutrition

Côte d’Ivoire has relatively modern prison facilities compared to the rest of West Africa, where most countries have not invested in new prisons since the 1970s. In neighbouring Ghana, the Jamestown Colonial fort only ceased to be used as a penitential facility in 2008.

In Guinea-Bissau, the country had to wait for the United Nations to build a prison in order to stop cramming prisoners into what is now a beautiful colonial house, renamed Casa dos Direitos or the House of Human rights. Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia all have overcrowded prisons dating back to the 1960s.

Still, Ivorian prisons were planned for another era. In the Abidjan Detention and Correction Centre, known by its French acronym MACA, overpopulation is an understatement. The building, conceived in the 1980s for 1,500 prisoners now has a population of over 5,000.

“Hygiene is very difficult. There are frequent water disruptions,” Jean a prisoner at MACA, who prefers to remain anonymous as prisoners are not allowed to speak to journalists, tells IPS over the phone.

And now, even if the government and international donors start to reopen detention centres in the north, closed by a decade of de facto separation with the south, congestion in state prisons remain dire.

The prison in Man, a town in west Côte d’Ivoire, holds several perpetrators of the 2010-2011 post-electoral crisis that resulted in over 3,000 deaths.

While it has been renovated in the last year, newer does not mean less crowded. It was built to hold only 300 inmates but it currently holds twice as many. Didier, who is awaiting trial in Man Prison, says the basic meals of rice have left him hungry. “We don’t [get to] eat three meals. Most of the time we eat only once,” he tells IPS over the phone.

In May, five prisoners from Man died and several others were hospitalised. Dr. Viviane Lawson Kiniffo, the prison’s doctor, told Ivorian media that promiscuity, malnutrition and hygiene were big issues.

Self-sufficiency and reintegration

Back in Saliakro, Justice Minister Gnenema Coulibaly inaugurates Côte d’Ivoire’s first prison farm in front a selected group of VIPs. “More farm prisons will soon be open,” he says.

Coulibaly has several reasons to be satisfied. Aside from improving inmate’s living conditions, once fully functional, Saliakro Prison Farm will relieve prison budgets by several hundred dollars as, besides feeding its own prisoners, it will produce enough to make a profit from selling produce on local markets.

But the 450 hectares of are not only there to deliver a relief to state budget.

“It is more than about feeding themselves. It is also about getting those prisoners back to a normal life. It is about learning new skills and being able to reintegrate and participate fully in society,” Saliakro’s superintendent, Pinguissie Ouattara, tells IPS. “This is about bringing an alternative to crime, and decreasing the crime rate.”

Saliakro is not on any map: this town does not exist. But it is the contraction of Kro, which means “village” in the local Baoule language and “Salia”, the first name of former superintendent Salia Ouattara who died in 2007.

“Our objective is truly to make prison time an opportunity for a sustainable change in life,” Bernard Aurenche, country representative of Prisoners Without Borders, a French NGO, tells IPS.

He explains that the 150 prisoners are backed by trained agronomists. Participants in the project will deepen their agricultural knowledge and will be paid 300 CFA (about 70 cents) per day for work.

“This will allow them to collect money to grow their own crops once they leave. It is also about reinsertion into real life. And getting confidence.”

One of the tractors that Prisoners Without Borders has bought for the Saliakro Farm project in Côte d’Ivoire. Learning to use modern machinery was an important step in the programme. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

Kouamé is more realistic. He was a farmer before, but tells IPS that he has learned much from the agronomists here. “I have learnt here many things that will make my farm more profitable, notably by diversifying production.”

But the road is still bumpy. Funding, which has been provided by the European Union, now needs to be secured for a longer term. And still, a better selection process of prisoners needs to be found as, so far, selection of participants was not based on any clear criteria.

But prison superintendent Ouattara, who also manages the Dimbokro Prison a few kilometres from Saliakro, is positive.

“It is the beginning. We will need to adjust. But we strongly believe that there will be a positive outcome for those men. Much more than leaving them by themselves doing nothing.”

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

Côte d’Ivoire’s economic capital, Abidjan, has developed a public transport strategy, which includes reserving a bus line and several levels of quality service for the middle class and civil servants. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
ABDIJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Jun 4 2014 (IPS)

Two years ago, it would have taken Catherine Adjoua almost an hour to travel from M’Badon, the isolated fishing area where she lives that has no asphalt roads, to reach her workplace some 13 kilometres away in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s economic capital.

“The travel was harsh, and the old buses very uncomfortable,“ she tells IPS.

Thanks to the government’s newly-built asphalt freeway connecting M’Badon to Abidjan, Adjoua’s commute now takes about half an hour — when there is no traffic.

The city, which is divided in two parts by the Ebrie Lagoon, has several congestion points, including two bridges and several overpasses. And now it is also an open construction site.

An overpass linking the bridge to the highway was open for traffic a month ago, and several other roads and overpasses will soon complement the network.

A third bridge is under construction that is set to be inaugurated in December 2014. It was, however, planned in 1995 for traffic of that era but its construction was postponed by the multiple crises affecting the country since then. This West African nation was affected by the recent post-electoral political crisis from 2010 to 2011. More than 3,000 people died in the violence that followed former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo’s refusal to concede victory to current President Allassane Ouattara.

The construction of a fourth bridge will start in the coming months, the government says.

By all appearances, it seems that the vehicle will dictate Abidjan’s development.

“There has been an important increase in vehicle traffic in the last years. With the crises, people who couldn’t afford cars indebted themselves to get one,” explains Pierre Dimba, coordinator of the Presidential Emergency Programmes for Infrastructure, a governmental agency responsible for supervising Côte d’Ivoire’s public works.

Dimba tells IPS that the crises resulted in many households buying two or three cars as they feared insecurity and felt they would be at risk using public transportation.

Abidjan residents also now prefer to live in suburbs, away from central areas that were hotspots of violence during the 2010 to 2011 post-electoral crisis. It resulted in an urban boom, which is yet to be quantified as the country’s first census of 1998 is still ongoing. However it also led to greater congestion on roads that were built well before this suburban development.

But the government has a firm desire to develop public transportation. And not only for those who have cars.

“We have made it a priority to rehabilitate public transport routes first [after the 2010 to 2011 post-electoral crisis]. Then, we decided to increase connections between living and working areas,” explains Dimba.

The impact is already visible for Abidjan’s two million daily commuters. Armand Koffi, a 58-year-old civil servant, can afford a car. But he has a good reason for not driving one: he hates driving.

“Abidjan drivers are crazy and aggressive! I prefer sitting, chatting, or reading my book,” he tells IPS.

He says that the recent work on the roads has reduced his commute to his suburban home by 30 minutes. “And the new buses are comfortable.”

Sotra — the public agency that is 60,2 percent-owned by Côte d’Ivoire’s government and 39,8 percent by a private consortium — has had a monopoly on public transportation within Abidjan since independence in 1960.

Legendary singer Lougah François even sang about all the destinations you can go to with Sotra for 50 CFAs (10 cents) in the 1970s.

After cumulating a deficit over the years, Sotra is set to see better days. The public agency has an investment of 150 billion CFA (about 300 million dollars) and two-thirds of this will go towards providing new buses and boats. The boats operate on Ebrie Lagoon.

So far, it has received about 500 new buses in 2013, with funding for a total of 2,000 buses in 2016, as well as 100 shuttle boats in 2016.

Sotra has made several attempts to increase its appeal to civil servants and the middle class, like Koffi. For 25,000 CFA per month (about 50 dollars), he is able to take an express bus from his office to his neighbourhood, with guaranteed seats. Sotra offers lower prices on normal routes, making the price more accessible to the lower income groups. And it has also modified its lines after making a geo-localisation studies of what are the busiest routes.

“The government has committed resources for further developments,” explains Dimba.

In spite of the expansion plans, Sotra currently owns 20 shuttle boats, running since the 1980s, which offer fast commuting for 100 to 200 CFAs (20 to 40 cents) between four different points on the Ebrie Lagoon.

The government has now allowed private owners to run shuttle boats on the lagoon. Turkish firm Yildirim and Ivorian firm SNEDAI will soon launch 45 shuttle boats. Their business interests amount to an investment of 20 billion CFA (about 41.5 million dollars).

Adjoua hopes that they will open a line between her house in M’Badon and her work. “It would be so much faster!”

But the Ivorian government’s commitment to public transportation went a step further when it announced, a month ago, that an urban train will be built in Abidjan.

“This infrastructure will solve Abidjan’s traffic jam problems. It will heal the city from important economic loss,” said Transport Minister Gaoussou Touré.

The train will cost 650 billion CFA (about 1.4 billion dollars), and will be paid for by a consortium consisting of French group Bouygues and two Korean firms; Dongsan Engineering and Hyundai Rotem. A portion of existing rails will open up for commuters by 2017. About 37 railways will connect the country, with a terminus at Abidjan’s airport. It is planned to transport 300,000 commuters per day.

In a downtown bus station, Yacinthe Yao and his teenage friends are excited about the train service. “That will make our life soooooo much easier.”

For the young man and his group of buddies in brown uniforms, there are no express buses. Their bus fare may cost only a monthly 3,000 CFA (about six dollars), but they have to fight for a place in an overpacked bus.

“We call it the Sardine line,” jokes one his friends. A few metres from where he stands, a train station will be built.

“It is good news, but we will be old when it starts to run. I was not even born when they started to work on the third bridge,” adds Kodjo, another friend.

Chimpanzees are one of the many endangered species that tourists will have the opportunity to see in Côte d’Ivoire’s Taï National Park. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
TAI NATIONAL PARK, Côte d’Ivoire, May 9 2014 (IPS)

Jonas Sanhin Touan has big dreams. As he sits under a canopy, he greets the rare tourist to Gouleako, one of the many villages near the entrance of Côte d’Ivoire’s Taï National Park, with a meal.

He hopes to raise the money to build a hotel on the three hectares of land he has purchased. “Here will be the restaurant,” the man everyone calls Aimée tells IPS, pointing to what is still bush.

The Taï National Park is a rare forest, one of the last intact tropical rain forests in West Africa. Stretching some 3,300 square kilometres, it is the region’s biggest tropical forest and also a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage site.

But there are obstacles to Touan’s dream.  “Cocoa planters have a very difficult life. Ecotourism is an opportunity for a better future.” -- local villager Jonas Sanhin Touan

Situated in southwestern Côte d’Ivoire, the park lies close to Liberia border and is only accessible by a seven-hour drive on pot-holed path from Abidjan, the country’s economic capital.

A lack of reliable public transport, conflict and sporadic violence are other threats to Touan’s dream. So too is encroaching deforestation.

To reach this remote area from Abidjan one has to cross several classified forests, of which 80 percent have already been cut down, according the government. Instead of the lush tropical vegetation that once covered the area, there are now carefully-planted fields, mostly of cocoa, but also of coffee, rubber and palm oil trees.

But ecotourism may just be the solution for a community in search of a better and sustainable future. Since January 2014, about a hundred tourists have been part of a tour organised by the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF) and the Ivorian forest protection department, known by its French acronym, OIPR.

However, it is still in its early stages, and the numbers of tourists it attracts are modest.

“Of course, this will take time. But this area is beautiful. I think that ecotourism will bring desperately-needed money,” says Touan. Currently, 80 percent of villagers earn their living through cocoa, making about 1,5 million CFA (about 3,185 dollars) per household annually.

But demographic pressure usually results in people burning down forests in order to increase their cocoa harvesting area.

The forest’s chimpanzee population has declined by about 80 percent in the last two decades, according the World Wide Fund for Nature.

And four other species from this forest are also on the red list of threatened species: pygmy hippopotamus, olive colobus monkeys, leopards and jentink’s duiker, a forest-dwelling duiker.

Poachers are partly responsible for this disappearance, but the destruction of the forest remains the main reason for the decline.

“The pressure around the park is very important,” Christophe Boesch, a primatology professor and WCF’s West Africa director, tells IPS.

He sees the current migration of people from the northern regions of Côte d’Ivoire, and from neighbouring countries like Burkina Faso and Mali, as a direct consequence of global warming.

“West Africa faced dramatic climate changes in the last 50 to 60 years. The Sahel region has become a desert. This creates a dramatic demographic explosion in Côte d’Ivoire,” he explains.

This flow of workers made Côte d’Ivoire the world’s biggest cocoa producer, but at the cost of Ivorian forests.

Villagers from Gouleako, one of the many villages outside Côte d’Ivoire’s Taï National Park perform a traditional ceremony for tourists. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

In Gouleako, the villagers perform a traditional ceremony for the half a dozen tourists seated on couches, being served palm wine.

The tourists will soon be transported to the OIPR-run eco hotel in Djouroutou, a nearby town. Later, they will be guided along the muddy trails of the Taï National Park to see the chimpanzees or take a ride on the Cavally River, which divides Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire.

OIPR and WCF hope that by boosting ecotourism, locals will see the economic value of preserving the forest, and the several unique species that it shelters.

“We hope by this project to teach people, more the local population than the tourists, about the added-value of a forest,” Emmanuelle Normand, WCF’s country director, tells IPS.

WCF says that several projects have proven to aid the survival of endangered species including in forests in the Great Lake regions.

Valentin Emmanuel, the deputy chief of Gouleako, remembers a time when he was still a kid when elephants crossed rice paddies and chimpanzees came out from the forest to play in cocoa trees.

“Before, we were living with the wildlife close to us. Now, you have to go far away, deep into the forest, to see that,” he tells IPS.

While he may be one of the majority of villagers who earn their livelihood from cocoa, he knows that the only way to return the forest to what it was during his childhood is to introduce more people to it. Touan knows it too.

“Cocoa planters have a very difficult life. Ecotourism is an opportunity for a better future,” says Touan.

Thierry N’Doufou and his team of IT specialists developed a tablet — the Qelasy — specifically for the Ivorian market as they aim to bring local school kids into the digital era. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
ABIDJAN, Apr 15 2014 (IPS)

When Ivorian Thierry N’Doufou saw local school kids suffering under the weight of their backpacks full of textbooks, it sparked an idea of how to close the digital gap where it is the largest — in local schoolrooms.

N’Doufou is one of 10 Ivorian IT specialists who developed the Qelasy — an 8-inch, Ivorian-engineered tablet that is set to be released next month by his technology company Siregex.The parent- and teacher-controlled tablet replaces all textbooks, correspondence books, calculators and the individual chalkboards often used in Ivorian classrooms.

“It is more than me feeling sorry for them. It is also about filling the digital gap between the south and the north, and bringing Ivorian education into the 21st century,” N’Doufou tells IPS.

Qelasy means “classroom” in several African languages, including Akan, Malinke, Lingala and Bamileke.

The Qelasy team began by converting all government-approved Ivorian textbooks into digital format.

“We were obligated to process everything in a way to have quality images for high definition screens. It is a lot of work,” explains N’Doufou, who is CEO of Siregex.

“We also enriched the curriculum with images and videos in way to make the educational experience more convivial.”

A solution to Ivorian problems 

The tablet uses an Android operating system and is resistant to water splashes, dust, humidity and heat.

“The Qelasy is protected against everything that an African pupil without transportation might encounter during their walk home from school,” says N’Doufou.

“We knew we needed our own product … Our clients’ needs are very specific,” he explained.

The parent- and teacher-controlled tablet replaces all textbooks, correspondence books, calculators and the individual chalkboards often used in Ivorian classrooms.

It can also be programmed to allow kids to surf the web or play games according to a pre-defined timetable. Siregex staff have also developed a store where parents and educators can buy over 1,000 elements like apps, educational materials and books.

While the Qelasy is currently focused on education, its marketing director Fabrice Dan tells IPS that users will soon be able to use it for other things. “We believe in technology as a way to create positive changes. And we believe in education. But eventually, we will present solutions in other fields, like agriculture and microcredit,” he says.

Qelasy was launched at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress 2014.  Exactly how much it will sell for has not yet been determined, but it is expected to be priced between 275 and 315 dollars.

That’s a steep price in a country where, according to government figures, only two million of its 23 million people are classified as middle class, earning between two and 20 dollars a day.

The Qelasy — an 8-inch, Ivorian-engineered tablet that is set to be released in May by local technology company Siregex. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

While N’Doufou expects the government to purchase a few tablets for use in schools, this product will mostly benefit the country’s middle and upper classes.

For now, it is only available for the Ivorian market, but the firm is targeting Francophone and Anglophone Africa.

However, the biggest challenge to the success of the product remains the electricity deficit. In a country where, according to the World Bank, only 59 percent of the population has access to electricity, a tablet with an eight-hour battery life faces limited penetration.

But N’Doufou says “There is an 80 percent cellphone penetration rate in Côte d’Ivoire in spite of the low electricity penetration. People find solutions in villages. They will for this too.”

While N’Doufou says “most of the know-how comes from here,” the Qelasy was assembled in the Chinese manufacturing hub of Shenzen, where 10,000 units have been produced.

Other Ivorian Tech Solutions 

The Qelasy is merely the latest in locally-developed technologies designed specifically to answer Ivorian problems.

Last week, young Ivorian programmer Regis Bamba launched an app to record the licence plate numbers and other details of taxis. Taxi Tracker allows a user to send this information about the taxi they are travelling in to selected users who can follow their journey in real time.

It is an attempt to find a way to prevent incidents like the murder of young Ivorian model Awa Fadiga, who was attacked during a taxi ride home in March.

The story of Fadiga’s tragic death gripped the nation as it exposed gaps in the country’s security and healthcare systems. She had been left untreated in a comatose state for more than 12 hours at a local hospital, which allegedly refused to treat her until payment for her care was received.

“It is my reaction to her death. I saw her picture, and I thought that could be my little sister. I told myself that I could not just sit back with my arms crossed,” Bamba tells IPS.

“It is my concrete solution as a citizen until the authorities do something meaningful to protect citizens. So Awa’s death will not be in vain.”

Another application, Mô Ni Bah, was developed by Jean Delmas Ehui in 2013 and allows Ivorians to declare births through SMS.

Trained locals then transfer the information provided in the SMSes to a registration authority. It has been another important invention in a country where the great distance between rural areas and government centres has hindered birth registration. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, almost a third of births are undeclared here.

Bacely Yoro Bi, a technology evangelist, internet strategist and organiser of ConnecTIC — a gathering of Abidjan’s IT enthusiasts — says there is definitively a boom in the local IT business.

“There is a lot happening here in terms of technology, although it is still limited to Abidjan. There are several start-ups that have been created with a local focus,” he tells IPS.

Part of the success, says Yoro Bi, is because of the cooperation among developers.

“Qelasy has been possible because there is a techie community that support each other,” N’Doufou points out.

Yoro Bi says that Côte d’Ivoire’s inventions should be exported to the rest of West Africa and to the world.

With the creation of two free trade zones dedicated to technology in Abidjan’s suburbs, and investments in internet infrastructure, he predicts that inventors like N’Doufou and Bamba now have the potential to go beyond the national borders.

A shopping mall in Côte d’Ivoire. While malls like this appeal to the upper middle class and the upper classes, several supermarkets and stores are beginning to targeting the middle class. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
ABIDJAN, Mar 27 2014 (IPS)

“I’m middle class. Definitively,” Sonia Anoh, a young and independent 30-year-old Ivorian tells IPS. Anoh has a master’s degree, earns 1,470 dollars a month working in marketing, lives alone, owns a car and is now shopping for a home. 

But while Anoh freely talks about her economic status, not many others brag so easily about being middle class in this West African nation.

Defining the African “middle class” is a challenge. For the World Bank, it comprises everyone who earns between two and 20 dollars per day. It’s a range that is far too broad and while the African Development Bank uses the same income range, it emphasises the need to subdivide the middle class into two.The middle class here has become a more diverse, complex grouping that is not necessarily just comprised of civil servants anymore.

The upper middle class, by this definition, earns between 10 and 20 dollars a day, and a vulnerable lower class is one that earns between two and four dollars a day. The latter are just marginally above the poverty line of 1.5 dollars a day and can easily slip back into it.

Côte d’Ivoire used to have the strongest middle class in West Africa until it was seriously hit by the post-1980 economic meltdown and the recent post-electoral political crisis from 2010 to 2011. More than 3,000 people died in the violence that followed former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo’s refusal to concede victory to current President Allassane Ouattara. Now the Ivorian middle class represents over two million of this country’s 23 million inhabitants, according to government figures.

While Côte d’Ivoire’s middle class may have shrunk, there are signs that this economic group appears to be slowly starting to increase. But its expansion remains limited by two decades of economic problems and conflict.

According to the Moscow-based Institute for Emerging Market Studies, the African middle class will rise three times from 32 million in 2009 to 107 million by 2030 — the largest increase in the world. And with the World Bank predicting that Côte d’Ivoire’s economy will grow at a rate of 8.2 percent for 2014, there is hope that this boom will lift many more of the country’s people out of poverty.

Growing or disappearing?

“Building a strong middle class was an important preoccupation for former president Félix Houphouet-Boigny (1905-1993),” Professor Marcel Benie Kouadio, economist and dean at the Abidjan Private University Faculty tells IPS.

“At the time, [middle class] meant mostly civil servants, doctors, magistrates and other liberal workers.

“Houphouet-Boigny [implemented] several policies to transform a middle class dependent on the state into an entrepreneur class. The state fostered the middle class to invest in cocoa or palm oil plantations as a way to build a middle class that would also be able to produce goods.”

The Felix Houphouet-Boigny stadium and the surrounding buildings in downtown Abidjan were built during his presidency when Côte d’Ivoire was a West African economic miracle that favoured the emergence of a middle class. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

Jean Coffie is a retired civil servant and an example of what Houphouet-Boigny dreamt of for the middle class. He is an entrepreneur who lives off his investments.

“My pension is not enough to live on. But I invested in hevea [rubber trees]. Income is random but I still earn more with that than from my government pension,” he tells IPS.

With this extra money, he is helping pay for his grandson’s studies in France. But Coffie is quick to point out that life for a middle class Ivorian is not what it used to be.

“At the time [during Houphouet-Boigny’s presidency], we had a lot of support to develop ourselves. University [education] and health care were more accessible. We might still be middle class but we lost all our privileges.”

Benie Kouadio agrees.

“The middle class has shrunk. Twenty years ago, teachers and doctors were middle class. Now, they can’t afford a new car. The Ivorian middle class lost its purchase power.”

A consumer class 

Purchase power is a key word. Accountants differ with economists in their understanding of the middle class; rather than analysing income, they look at disposable revenue.

Being middle class is about hitting a “sweet spot”, where people are able to spend money for things other than survival, says a report from accounting firm Ernst & Young.

Marcel Anné is the managing director of the supermarket chain Jour de Marché, which is situated in downtown Abidjan, the country’s economic capital. He has a good view of the emerging consumer class.

“Actually, this supermarket is less crowded than it used to be but this is more about changing consumer habits. This used to be [a] central [spot] for the middle class. Civil servants would buy things here and then go home,” he tells IPS.

The middle class here has become a more diverse, complex grouping that is not necessarily just comprised of civil servants anymore. The privatisation of companies, the need for qualified labour work in IT and on the new oil and gas fields have diversified this economic grouping.

So now Jour de Marché has opened “more, smaller supermarkets where the middle class live.”

And around Abidjan, the housing boom too suggests that there is a rising middle class.

Riviera Palmeraie, a former plantation where palm oil trees were cut down to make space for several small bungalows, has been one of the first major housing developments in Abidjan based on affordable units.

And now similar developments are slowly spreading across the city and beyond.

Ousmane Bah is the director of Alliance Cote d’Ivoire, one of the companies building middle class housing. His company will build the Akwaba Residence, one of many housing developments being constructed along Abidjan’s outskirts. Prices for homes start at 21,000 dollars for a two-room home and 36,100 dollars for four rooms.

“It targets mostly the young professionals starting up in life, as well as civil servants,” he tells IPS.

His project, like several others, is supported by the government and is part of an initiative to boost social housing for the middle class.

The government targets households with a revenue of less than 840 dollars per month. Buyers only need to provide a 10 percent cash deposit, and then benefit from a government-backed loan with low interest rates of 5.5 percent.

It addresses a difficult problem that seriously limits the growth of the Ivorian middle class: lack of credit.

“People are not used to buying flats here. They rent. Credit institutions are not used to provide housing loans. This is a big issue. We cannot simply build and expect people to buy,” says Bah.

Mohamed Diabaté is the first to agree.

“This is ridiculous. I wanted to get a credit for my house. It was easier to get credit to buy a goat for a Muslim holiday than having a real sustainable project. They did not even look at my file,” the 40-year-old IT specialist tells IPS.

He says even though he has a “comfortable revenue” and a steady job for 12 years, he could not obtain a home loan.

Benie Kouadio points out that “this is a clear limitation to the growth of the middle class. The middle class has no access to credit. Banks do not give loans for housing or cars any more.”

A girl playing in a United Nations Refugee Agency camp in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in February 2013. Refugees here fled their native Mali in March 2012 when Islamist groups took control of the north of the country. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
ABIDJAN, Mar 19 2014 (IPS)

In West Africa, the Malian and Ivorian political crises have resulted in the biggest number of refugees in the region. But brewing insecurity could mean that they will be unable to return home any time soon as armed groups remain a threat to West Africa.

In Nigeria, Islamist groups have targeted civilians, and are now hiding in neighbouring Niger and Cameroon. In Mali, even though the United Nations mission is providing military support, the Movement for Unity Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA) Islamists remain a threat and there have been a number of bomb explosions.“We have to have military escorts in this region to protect the mission from possible kidnappings.” -- Mohamed Bah, UNHCR

Côte d’Ivoire too has faced insecurity. While the country recovers from its post-electoral crisis that resulted in over 3,000 deaths between 2010 to 2011, refugees are slow to return from Ghana, Togo and Liberia.

There are now 93,738 refugees, mostly in Liberia, Togo and Ghana, and 24,000 Ivorian internally displaced persons (IDPs), according to the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

But the situation in the west of the country, in Bas-Sassandra, where most of the killings were perpetrated during the post-election crisis, remains fragile with the resumption of attacks during the last few weeks.

Ilmari Käihkö is a PhD student at the department for Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Sweden, who has conducted extensive field studies in eastern Liberia and investigated the Ivorian refugee areas there.

He said that Ivorian refugees were waiting for the results of the 2015 presidential elections before deciding whether to return home.

“Refugees believe that [current President Allassane ] Ouattara will lose. There might be a negative reaction if he wins,” he told IPS.

Côte d’Ivoire’s government has made a special effort to encourage the return of its refugees. It has sent several envoys to refugee communities to share the word that they will be welcomed when they return home.

This policy is working in part as several notorious supporters of former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo have come back to Côte d’Ivoire, including former Abidjan Port Authority director Marcel Gossio and over 1,300 ex-combatants.

Gbagbo, who is awaiting trial before the International Criminal Court, is accused of crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the 2010 to 2011 post-electoral crisis.

For Käihkö, the situation remains tense and the potential for more violence remains high as there are also land ownership issues in western Côte d’Ivoire that need to be addressed to ensure the safe return of the refugees.

The Ivorian refugees in Liberia are mostly from western Côte d’Ivoire, where some of the world’s biggest cacao producers originate. However, many have lived on the land without title deeds, adhering to the policy of “the land belongs to who takes care of it”. This has resulted in a conflict of ownership of land between the native Guérés and settlers to western Côte d’Ivoire.

According to Käihkö, the issues concerning land ownership are a key reason why many Ivorian refugees choose to remain in Liberia — many feel they don’t have anything to return to.

Nigeria too faces ongoing insecurity.

Already, violent attacks perpetrated by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in northern Nigeria have forced 1,500 persons to flee in southern Niger’s Diffa Region and more than 4,000 to Cameroon over the last few months.

Boko Haram has targeted schools, hospitals and other institutions perceived as being from the West. And, as the number of refugees and IDPs increases, operations to provide aid for these people have been restricted because of security fears.

And it’s not just in Nigeria that the security situation has complicated humanitarian operations.

Across the region, aid workers have been abducted and attacked, and expat workers are becoming targets. On Feb. 8, an International Red Cross Committee convoy was attacked and five Malian employees were kidnapped by MUJWA.

As humanitarian agencies become targets they are increasingly forced to spend money on security for their staff that ideally should go to those in need.

“We have to have military escorts in this region to protect the mission from possible kidnappings,” Mohamed Bah, information officer at the Burkina Faso’s UNHCR office, told IPS.

Burkina Faso shares a border with Mali and although the security situation remains relatively stable, UNHCR says “strict security measures are in place in rural areas, particularly in Dori and Djibo, limiting the office’s access to its people of concern.”

This complicates both aid operations and repatriation.

“This insecurity limits access to repatriate in Mali. We need MINUSMA [U.N. Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali] support to go meet the repatriates. Several NGOs have limited their presence in return areas,” Olivier Beer, from the UNHCR’s Mali office, told IPS.

Young girls near a United Nations Refugee Agency camp in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in February 2013. Refugees here fled their native Mali in March 2012 when Islamist groups took control of the north of the country. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

In December 2012, few weeks before French forces started to bomb Islamist targets, there were as many as 500,000 Malian refugees and IDPs.

Now, as the stabilisation effort continues with MINUSMA slowly taking over military operations, numbers have reduced to 167,000 refugees in isolated camps in neighbouring Burkina Faso, Niger, Algeria and Mauritania. Within the country there are about 200,000 IDPs.

The UNHCR does not recommend a homecoming yet.

“For an organised UNHCR-backed return, there are some protection criterions that need to be met to ensure safety and dignity,” Beer said. A lack of housing and schooling, insecurity and no access to justice have all contributed to the delay in repatriating refugees.

However, it may take longer for the refugees to return home, even if the security issues are resolved. Several U.N. agencies and NGOs have warned that West Africa faces a grave food crisis.

More than 800,000 Malians, according to British NGO Oxfam International, currently need food assistance, and numbers are likely to reach even more critical proportions when food reserves will be empty when the lean season will start in mid-May.

Côte d’Ivoire refugees will also face a challenge. UNHCR Liberia bureau chief Khassim Diagne stated that if their food supply was not increased within two months more than 52,000 Ivorian refugees in Liberia would starve.

Supporters of the opposition Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), the party of former President Laurent Gbagbo pictured here at the party’s first major rally in Abidjan held from Feb 21 to 23, 2014. Courtesy: Marc-André Boisvert

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
ABIDJAN, Feb 25 2014 (IPS)

Armand Konan stood in front of the Palais des Sports, a stadium in Abidjan’s popular neighbourhood, Treichville, selling videos and speeches of former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo. “People need to remember what our president said…He is our president. And we want him back,” Konan told IPS.

While Gbagbo waits for his trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), his party, the Ivorian Popular Front (known by its French acronym FPI), is slowly recovering its political might in this West African nation.

Gbagbo is accused of crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the 2010 to 2011 post-electoral crisis. More than 3,000 people died in the violence that followed Gbagbo’s refusal to concede victory to current President Allassane Ouattara.

But as the country’s 2015 elections approach, the future of the FPI, one of the most important political forces in Côte d’Ivoire, hangs in the balance. While the next presidential polls will be held in October 2015, the FPI has not decided if it will run or continue its boycotting of elections – which it began doing during the 2012 legislative elections. And, so far, they have no official presidential candidate.

Inside the walls of the Palais des Sports, in the Ivorian economic capital of Abidjan, there were about 2,500 people who agreed with Konan. While it was not the first FPI rally held since the post-electoral crisis, this Feb. 21 to 23 convention was the first major political meeting to be held in Abidjan that was approved by authorities.

The ex-president might still be held at the Dutch prison complex in Scheveningen, but Gbagbo’s influence over his party remains strong.

“This convention is a tribute to [him]. We are determined to struggle for his liberation,” said Pascal Affi N’Guessan, the new president of the FPI, to much applause.

Affi N’Guessan urged the government “to invest in peace” and to ensure that “the peace and security conditions are there so every Ivorian will be ensured to live and work without fear for their lives.”

Affi N’Guessan, who still claims his party was victorious in the 2010 elections, predicted the FPI would soon take office again. “The FPI will soon be back in power through the only way [we] have been taught: a peaceful transition to democracy.”

Bakayoko-isation

Henriette Broh is a hardliner who refuses any alternative to Koudou, as many here fondly call Gbagbo. She is certain that by the time the 2015 elections come around, Gbagbo will be free and she will be able to vote for him again.

“Laurent Gbagbo will be liberated soon. This is what god wants. We know it. The ICC has no proof. And he will come back to clean the mess that was [made by] Ouattara. They are robbers! They stole the elections. And now they steal the money,” the 50-year-old told IPS.

Like many Ivorians, she accuses the government of “kidnapping” the economy and favouring its own group of supporters at every level of the administration. Locals have even created a word for this: “Bakayoko-isation” — it is a grouping of the last names of several figures around Ouattara including, the current Minister of Interior Hamed Bakayoko, and others who have the same surname but are not from the same family.

“The almost 10 percent growth rate? No Ivorian has seen [the benefits of] this. The cost of living is higher than ever. The government is lying,” said Anselme, another militant FPI supporter, who refused to give his last name as he feared reprisals.

A national roundtable?

Since last August, President Ouattara has made several attempts to open dialogue with the FPI. The opposition leaders have met the government on several occasions and there have been constant rumours – which were never acknowledged – that a national coalition government will be formed.

But it will take more than talks for FPI supporters to forget the hardships they experienced over the last few years.

Affi N’Guessan was arrested when Gbagbo’s regime collapsed in April 2011. He was liberated on Aug. 6, 2013. A hundred other FPI leaders, who were present at the convention, were also imprisoned and then released on bail or went to exile.

Several FPI supporters are still imprisoned, while others have had their assets frozen and claim to have been illegally evicted from their homes.

On Sunday, Feb. 23, the FPI closed the convention with a popular rally in an historic place for the FPI, the Ficgayo Square in Yopougon — a neighbourhood that has been very supportive of Gbagbo.

Pascal Affi N’Guessan, the new president of the opposition Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), the party of former President Laurent Gbagbo pictured here at the party’s first major rally in Abidjan held from Feb 21 to 23, 2014. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

Affi N’Guessan asked for “real justice”.

“For an effective, sincere and frank reconciliation, we have to move away from the victor’s justice. We have to free the ones still in prison, because they are there in the name of this victor’s justice,” Affi N’Guessan said.

But while the FPI was reconnecting with its supporters, in a pro-Ouattara neighbourhood the Collective of the Ivory Coast Victims was protesting against the liberation of post-electoral criminals and the “political interference in the justice system.”

Doudou Diene, United Nations independent expert on human rights, who visited Côte d’Ivoire last week, seemed to agree and called for the prosecution of perpetrators.

“There is considerable progress made, but more needs to be done in terms of political dialogue,” Diene said.

At a bus stop in central Abidjan, Awa Konate, a 25-year-old law student, agreed with Diene’s analysis that no matter the outcome, the FPI needs to get involved in the political process to avoid another violent crises.

“I did not vote for the FPI. But almost half of Ivorians voted for them. You have to respect that. We are tired of crises.

“The government and Gbagbo now need to talk. It is not for the people to die for politicians. And we need to make sure that this will never happen again. We have yet to find the balance between impunity and letting the FPI become a constructive opposition.”

Dozos are a traditional hunter brotherhood found in several West African countries. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
DUÉKOUÉ, Dec 22 2013 (IPS)

In Cote d’Ivoire, traditional hunters known as dozos are accused of human rights abuses and extortion. But in several areas, they also remain the sole guarantor of local safety.

Marie Doh looks closely at a posse of three young men wearing traditional gear, standing at a checkpoint.

“With their clothes too wide for their skinny bodies, they look a bit comical,” Doh says. But she is not laughing. Each man holds an old rifle in his hands.

“They are there for our protection, they say. But they are mostly there to pick up the pennies we can spare them.” Doh claims that she is not “that much” afraid of them, but still gives them 100 CFA (about 20 cents) “several times” a month.

The three men are dozos, a traditional hunter brotherhood that has existed in several West African countries for centuries. They recruit beyond ethnic and religious lines, although most are Malinke and Muslim.

A report published last week by the U.N. mission in Cote d’Ivoire, UNOCI, claims that at least 228 people have been killed, 164 injured and 162 illegally arrested and detained by dozos in several regions of the country between March 2009 and May 2013. It says that 274 confirmed cases of looting, fire and extortion have been committed by dozos.

In Duékoué, a town in the southwestern department of the same name, 12 dozos are seated in the courtyard of an unfinished building. Wearing street clothes, they look more like a social club than a militia.

“It is a not a job we have chosen. It is a duty,” says Dembele Balla, Duékoué’s dozo chief. “I am a dozo since I was a little kid. I was initiated the traditional way.”

Each dozo must pass through a ritual initiation. They are believed to have mystic powers derived from amulets.

“In 2002, we got a call from the prefect,” he says. At the time, an armed uprising of disaffected soldiers had devolved into a civil war that split the country in two.

Between 2002 and 2007, Duékoué was in the middle of the “zone de confiance”, a no man’s land between Forces Nouvelles rebels controlling the North and the government-controlled South.

For years, lawlessness reigned here. Since the 2010-11 post-electoral crisis, dozos have informally contributed to military operations to secure the area. The chief says there are now 2,300 dozos in the Duékoué region.

On his little motorcycle, Souleymane Fofana, the dozos’ security chief, takes IPS on a patrol of Duékoué. “Before we came, when people were going to the fields, they were turned into dead bodies,” he says.

Farmer Yacouba Dosso warmly greets Fofana. “We are happy with dozos patrolling. They are our sole protectors,” says the cocoa grower.

He explains that there are many robbers, especially during the cocoa harvests as planters come back home with huge sums of money that can reach one million CFAS (around 2,000 dollars). Police and military do not patrol the area.

On the way, several checkpoints have been set up by dozos: a branch blocking the small muddy path, a shelter covered with palm branches, a smoking fire with food cooking.

Local dozos lead several patrols during the night. “We do not travel with big pick-ups. We are somewhat invisible, so criminals do not see us coming,” Fofana says. “We are very efficient.”

Ethnic tensions

Fofana stops his bike in front of a house a few metres from the site of the former Nahibly refugee camp. “This is where five people got killed. Criminals murdered them,” he says.

On Jul. 20, 2012, an angry mob estimated at 1000-strong, allegedly led by dozos and members of the national army, attacked the camp. Among the 2,500 inhabitants, mostly ethnic Gueres and supporters of former president Laurent Gbagbo, at least 14 were killed and hundreds more injured.

Dozos are not a neutral self-defence group in this region plagued with ethnic tensions. Ivory Coast’s cocoa sector under President Felix Houphouet Boigny – who used to say the land belongs to whoever cultivates it – has attracted Ivoirians from other regions, known as allogenes, as well as foreign workers.

This led to several clashes in the last decade with native Guerzes, who say they own the land, and migrants who often have paid for the land but have no clear property titles.

In this context, dozos are perceived to protect foreigners and allogenes against disenfranchised, unemployed Guerze youth, who claim their ancestors’ land, and pro-Gbagbo militias who had terrorised the local population.

Fofana denies this. “We are not into politics. We just protect communities against bandits,” he claims.

“Harassing, killing and hurting people, this is against dozo ethics. A dozo does not kill.” He says human right violations are committed by fake dozos.

Eugene Nindorera, head of the human rights division at ONUCI, agrees. “There are true and fake dozos. There are people dressing up like dozos and taking up a rifle, with values that are not traditional dozo values.”

Still, he believes all the militias should be demobilised and human right violations punished.

The government has adopted measures to demobilise and disarm dozos, as well as to redeploy security forces in the region. But the U.N. representative is sceptical.

“There is a gap between what is said and what is done. It is a question of political will. The government wants now to demobilise dozos, but it still not has enough policemen and military to do so,” Nindorera says.

“Once, gendarmes arrested a dozo. A few hours later, 40 dozos showed up with rifles at the gendarmerie. There is a power relation here that remains to be addressed,” he concludes.

Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s economic centre, is the scene of major infrastructure development. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Nov 18 2013 (IPS)

All over the Ivorian economic capital, Abidjan, large cranes, involved in the construction of new buildings and highways, are dotted across the city skyline.

Soon this city, which is split in two by a lagoon, will have a second port terminal, a fourth bridge and several overpasses and other major infrastructure that are expected to metamorphose Abidjan’s landscape. Business is clearly improving in this West African nation.

Côte d’Ivoire’s booming business successes have been highlighted by the World Bank “Doing Business 2014” report, where its economy was ranked 20th for having made the most significant improvement in its business environment since 2005.

In times of a global economic downturn, Côte d’Ivoire is a rare case. Not only does the country have a positive GDP growth for 2012, but the numbers exceed expectations at 9,8 percent rather than the 8,1 percent forecast by the International Monetary Fund.

But while Côte d’Ivoire’s growth may be impressive the world over, its population of about 19.8 million is impatient to see these economic gains transform their lives for the better.

Marius Comoe, president of the Federation of Consumer Associations of Ivory Coast (FACACI), is convinced that things are getting worse.

“Purchasing power has diminished. Basic food and gas prices have increased substantially,” he told IPS.

At the Carena market in downtown Abidjan, women complain about the increasing cost of life.

“Ah, it is so expensive. Prices have increased a lot in the last two years. I really have difficulty [making] ends meet. Vegetable prices have increased, but meat and oil are becoming incredibly expensive,” Alice Boue told IPS while selecting a few vegetables to purchase.

Martine Broue, a trader at the Carena market in downtown Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, says that while the cost of other goods have gone up, her vegetables prices have not. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

But vegetable seller Martine Broue argued that while the cost of other goods have gone up, her vegetables prices have not. Prices of vegetables are difficult to track because of the constant fluctuations. The National Institute of Statistics, known by its French acronym, INS, estimates that vegetable prices have increased about 10 percent from October 2012 to October 2013.

In addition, cooking oil has almost doubled in price from 1.30 dollars in 2010 to 2.4 dollars in 2013. Meat, which sold for about four dollars a kilogramme (kg) in January 2013 currently costs about 4,6 dollars a kg in some areas. Rice, however, has maintained a steady price over the last year at about 65 cents per kg, according the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

“Spending power is not only about staple goods. Electricity is now double the cost of what it was under [former President Laurent] Gbagbo and affordable accommodation is impossible to find,” explained Comoe. INS estimates that the total cost of energy has increased 6,3 percent in the last year.

And these price hikes have also affected services.

“Healthcare is two to three times more expensive than it was three years ago,” said Comoe. The cost of education has increased by 25,3 percent for high school and 92,6 percent for university fees. “Several kids cannot go to school because their parents do not have the money to pay for school fees,” Comoe added.

Dr. José Coffie N’Guessan, economist and director of research at the Ivorian Centre of Economic and Social Research, explained the contradiction in the country’s rapid economic growth and the lack of improvement for people.

“This huge growth rate is not extraordinary, considering that the economy has contracted roughly five percent in the years prior to 2012,” he told IPS. Côte d’Ivoire has faced several crises since the 1999 coup d’état and most recently the 2010 to 2011 post-electoral crisis that resulted in over 3,000 deaths.

“We are catching up with the past. [The economic growth] will be remarkable if we are able to maintain those numbers for two to three years,” N’Guessan said, explaining that the majority of the country’s growth was largely due to the necessary infrastructure investments currently being made by the government, which were postponed since the country’s post-electoral crisis.

N’Guessan is uncertain whether this growth will reduce unemployment, pointing out “this is not automatic.”

According to the General Confederation of Companies of Côte d’Ivoire, last year about five million Ivoirians were unemployed, with the unemployment rate among 15- to 35-year-olds as high as 60 percent.

“Growth will be stimulated by building new infrastructure, but it might not translate into jobs the same way that investments made in factories [do]. So far, Ivoirians do not feel that unemployment is going down,” N’Guessan said.

He added that foreign investors “tended to be interested in sectors that do not create a lot of jobs, especially natural resources. To create jobs, we have to invest in agriculture, agro-industries and the tertiary sector.”

“The population has yet to gain from this growth. The impact is never immediate. It will take a certain time. We have to be patient. Government has decided to reach high to bring wealth fast,” N’Guessan said.

He said that in order for the government to build a sustainable growth, it had to invest “in something else other than ostentatious infrastructures.”

“We need to invest in human capital. We are at a crossroad. And it is important to not miss it.”

A health worker explains the sexual transmission of infections at the family planning clinic in Yopougon. ARV shortages and long waits discourage women from starting or staying on treatment. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Fulgence Zamblé
ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Nov 8 2013 (IPS)

At the Cocody-Anono community health centre, south-east of the Ivorian economic capital of Abidjan, Bertine Bahi* regularly attends awareness sessions on Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) for women living with HIV.

Bahi tested positive in her third month of pregnancy. In October, the 32-year-old was five months pregnant and still had not revealed her HIV status to her husband.

“Despite the midwife’s advice, it is difficult to tell my husband.  If I do, I will be thrown out of my home,” Bahi says. “For now, when I can get hold of antiretrovirals (ARVs), I take them in secret.”

Suzanne Asseman*, a 37-year-old housewife from Agboville in southern Côte d’Ivoire, learned she was HIV-positive in June 2012. She has to travel to Abidjan, 80 kms away, for the ARVs that keep her healthy.

This is not easy because Asseman is seven months pregnant. When she finally received her ARV pills for October, she had missed five weeks of treatment.  ARVs must be taken regularly every day or their efficiency is compromised.

Asseman has always waited one or two weeks to get her medication, but this time the wait was longer. Now she has doubts about her treatment. 

“I was reluctant to go on ARVs. Where I live, the medication has expired by the time it gets there,” she confides to IPS. “I think I would rather stop taking the drugs than keep up all the running around.”

Rolande Yao, a social worker in the PMTCT centre in Attécoubé in central Abidjan, says that stigmatisation is increasing, and the frequent disruptions in ARV supply create yet more difficulties for patients.

Three out of 10 pregnant women living with HIV in Côte d’Ivoire miss out on PMTCT, says the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in its 2013 Progress Report on the Global Plan.

Testing pregnant women for HIV often puts a strain on couples’ relationships.

“When a man is told his wife is HIV-positive, often he suspects her of being unfaithful,” says Yao. “He may refuse to be tested and reject his wife.”

Yao estimates that seven out of 10 women experience rejection and that, despite intervention by medical staff, many husbands refuse to take them back.

Fear of rejection prompts pregnant women who have tested positive to change their health centre or to keep silent. Others become lost to the medical system, avoiding antenatal medical care and risking passing the virus to their babies, Yao adds.

According to Cyriaque Ako, coordinator of the M2C (Mother to Child) project, many of these lost cases make their way to traditional healers.

M2C works in Yopougon, the country’s most populous community, near Abidjan, where women prefer to go to healers and many do not know about PMTCT, explains Ako. The project, now in its second year, aims to link women from 15,000 poor households to health and HIV testing centres.

The HIV prevalence rate is 3.2 percent in this West African country with a population of 20 million, which struggles to contain the epidemic and care for its estimated 450,000 HIV positive people, according to UNAIDS.

Some modest progress is visible. UNAIDS points out a decline in the number of children newly infected every year, down from 6,700 in 2009 to 5,000 in 2012. “Declining, but not rapidly enough,” says the Progress Report.

However, AIDS non-governmental organisations (NGOs) complain that since the end of the 2011 to 2012 post-electoral crises, people living with HIV seem to have been abandoned. The NGOs have regularly sounded the alarm on the repeated ARV supply disruptions.

One of the main causes of the ARV shortage has been the collapse of the health system over a decade-long political crisis, starting with an armed rebellion in the north and west of the country and simmering into post-electoral conflict.

During this period, the international community imposed arms and trade embargoes on Ivorian ports – Abidjan and San Pedro – in order to force former president Laurent Gbagbo to leave power after his electoral defeat. Medicines ordered from Europe could no longer be delivered to Côte d’Ivoire. In addition, many health facilities were looted and closed temporarily during the fighting, according to the NGOs.

Yaya Coulibaly, president of the Ivorian Network of People Living with HIV, which is known by its French acronym RIP+, says “community advisors and prescribing doctors have to lie to patients because there are not enough ARVs at the government pharmacy.” Even the basic ARV Nevirapine, which is prescribed for PMTCT, is in short supply, he says.

Coulibaly explains that at times ARVs are available in abundance in certain health centres but in short supply in others, pointing to a distribution problem. At the Ministry of Health, he adds, a revamp of the government pharmacy is underway to improve ARV distribution. This will help mothers like Asseman and Bahi stay on treatment and healthy.

*Not their real names

Many Ivoirians fled the country’s violence in 2011. It was estimated that 100,000 people fled to neighbouring Liberia. Pictured here is a family who fled to Butuo, Liberia, in this photo dated 2011. Credit: Jessica McDiarmid/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Oct 31 2013 (IPS)

“We are sad. We want our president back,” Yao Amandine told IPS from a street corner in the Ivorian economic metropolis, Abidjan, after the International Criminal Court ruled against granting former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo a conditional release on Tuesday. 

Gbagbo is accused of crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the 2010 to 2011 post-electoral crisis. More than 3,000 people died in the violence that followed Gbagbo’s refusal to concede victory to Allassane Ouattara, who was internationally recognised as the winner of the election.

But in June, the ICC said that the case against Gbagbo was not strong enough and asked chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to conduct further investigations and submit more evidence. The defence used the delay to ask for Gbagbo’s conditional release.

For weeks Gbagbo’s supporters in Côte d’Ivoire waited expectantly for his release. On the newsstand behind Amandine, newspaper headlines read: “Gbagbo packs his luggage” and “Gbagbo will be back soon.” But on Oct. 29, when news broke from The Hague that the former president would remain in detention pending a possible trial, many of his supporters become deflated.

“They have stolen our president from us, and they don’t want to give him back. [The prosecutor Fatou] Bensouda doesn’t have any proof. They have to release him,” Broue Jean told IPS as he stood next to Amandine.

In this West African nation the ICC proceedings have been greeted with a mix of incomprehension and frustration.

“It’s true that people do not understand what is happening,” Ali Ouattara, president of the Ivorian Coalition for the ICC, told IPS. “People need to understand that [these] decisions follow long-term proceedings in the court. They do not see the motives behind the decisions.”

He admitted that the ICC needed to provide constant communication with Ivoirians. However, he said he still believed that the international court offered the best opportunity for Ivoirians to achieve justice.

Here in Côte d’Ivoire, far from the ICC proceedings, justice seems to have been postponed for many.

Human rights groups continue to call for the end of the “selective justice” that is being meted out by local courts. In a report released in April titled “Turning Rhetoric Into Reality: Accountability for Serious International Crimes in Côte d’Ivoire,” Human Right Watch (HRW) said the government’s efforts to ensure justice for victims of the violence was uneven.

Since the crisis, more than 130 pro-Gbagbo supporters have faced trial, while only one Allassane Ouattara supporter was arrested and prosecuted.

Right groups say that this has led to a stalemate in the reconciliation process here. Amnesty International, HRW and the International Federation for Human Rights (IFHR) have demanded that justice be blind and called for Allassane Ouattara’s supporters to be also held responsible for their crimes.

But it seems that Gbagbo will be the first and possibly the sole Ivorian to be transferred to The Hague.

Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s economic centre, was the scene of violent confrontations during the 2010 to 2011 post-electoral crisis between supporters of former President Laurent Gbagbo and current President Allassane Ouattara. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

The ICC has also issued a warrant of arrest for Gbagbo’s wife and former First Lady Simone Gbagbo for charges related to her alleged involvement in the violence following the December 2010 election. But the Ivorian government refused to transfer her, arguing instead that it was now capable of prosecuting its own nationals.

The government is also yet to make a decision on another arrest warrant issued by the ICC.

On Sept. 23, Ivorian Minister of Justice Gnenema Coulibaly said that the ICC had provided a sealed arrest warrant for Charles Ble Goude, the former leader of the Young Patriots, a pro-Gbagbo, quasi-militia group. He is accused of crimes against humanity and rape that occurred during the violence from December 2010 to April 2011.

Last week, Ble Goude’s Ivorian legal team demanded that the government put him on trial in Côte d’Ivoire.

“We think Ivorian courts are capable,” Ble Goude’s lawyer Kouadio N’Dry Claver said during a press conference. “We ask that the government take the same courageous and salutary decision [as it did with former First Lady Simone] Gbagbo’s case.”

Whatever the government’s decision on Ble Goude’s transfer, it has already announced the impending closure of the bodies set up to deal with the post-electoral violence.

Government spokesperson Bruno Koné said last week that the mandate of the Special Investigation Cell, which was set up in 2011 to investigate crimes during the violence, would not be renewed once it ended this December. He said the country’s police services and courts would be able to take on the role.

“The unit [was] set up at a particular moment. Now, the situation is back to normal. There is no question about maintaining it,” Koné said. Since April, many of the unit’s judges and investigators have been transferred to other departments.

But Patrick Baudouin, a lawyer for IFHR, said during a press conference on Oct. 22 that the government had not provided “a logical argument about why they should stop the unit’s activities.”

The mandate of the Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was also set up two years ago, will also not be renewed when it ends. And IFHR is concerned that post-electoral crimes will remain unpunished. “A lot needs to be done on [President Allassane] Ouattara’s side. Ivory Coast has [experienced] too much suffering [to] proclaim impunity in all camps,” said Baudouin.

But president of the Collective of Victims in Ivory Coast, Issiaka Diaby, has faith in the system.

“Justice takes time,” he told IPS.

“I think that the refusal to grant conditional release to Laurent Gbagbo is a way to guarantee social peace and cohesion while justice is being rendered. We need this. Justice needs to be [served] not only for the 2010 to 2011 post-electoral crisis, but also for earlier events,” Diaby said.

A 2002 to 2007 civil war split the country in two as the Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast attacked forces loyal to Gbagbo and took control of the north. But according to the April HRW report, “from 2003 onwards, political and military leaders on both sides implicated in overseeing atrocities retained their positions with complete impunity.”

“We have to end an entire decade of impunity. Unfortunately, we cannot request too much for now. If the minister says that we do not need the Special Investigative [Cell] anymore, great. We will follow on that. But we will maintain our vigilance to ensure that courts and investigators will really follow on,” Diaby said.

The village of rape survivor Angeline Mwarusena in DRC continues to be threatened by militia. Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 16 2013 (IPS)

Despite the United Nations’ “zero tolerance” policy against sexual violence, there has been a rash of gender-based crimes in several of the world’s conflict zones, including South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Northern Uganda, Somalia, the Central African Republic – and, more recently, in politically-troubled Egypt and Syria.

Describing rape as “a weapon of war”, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council last month that sexual violence occurred wherever conflicts raged, “devastating survivors and destroying the social fabric of whole communities”.

“It was a crime under international human rights law and a threat to international peace and security,” he said.

Since most of the heinous crimes are taking place in conflict zones overseen by U.N. peacekeeping missions, the United Nations is unleashing an army of Women Protection Advisers (WPAs) to specifically curb sexual violence in war zones.

For starters, they will be deployed with peacekeeping missions in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Mali and Somalia.

Asked if these WPAs will be confined to Africa, Andre-Michel Essoungou of the Public Affairs Division at the U.N.’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support told IPS, “There is no restriction to a region of the world in this regard. But the process is starting with these missions for the time being.

“The recruitment procedures are currently underway,” he added.

Marcy Hersh, a senior advocate for women and girls’ rights at Refugees International, told IPS her organisation insists that prior to the further deployment of WPAs to peacekeeping and political missions, the United Nations should take urgent action to ensure that WPAs are trained before their deployment and encouraged to work collaboratively with already operational humanitarian structures.

Additionally, they should be held accountable to fundamental and non-negotiable ethical and safety criteria for investigating sexual violence in conflict, which preserves the safety and dignity of survivors.

She said the recently unanimously passed Security Council Resolution 2106 includes language that is in accordance with these recommendations in its calls for the timely deployment of WPAs, their adequate training, and their coordination across multiple sectors.

Given this strong language, combined with the statements from multiple member states that WPAs should be deployed to all peacekeeping and political missions, Hersh said, “I am confident that the United Nations will work urgently to improve the rollout of WPAs.”

She said she is also hopeful that the United Nations will ensure that WPAs collect timely, objective, accurate and reliable information as a basis for prevention and response programming and preserve the safety and dignity of sexual violence survivors.
The secretary-general said that U.N. Women and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) have developed, on behalf of the U.N. Action Network, the “first-ever scenario-based training programme for peacekeepers”, some of whom, along with aid workers, have been accused of sexual violence – specifically in South Sudan, DRC, Cote d’Ivoire and Haiti.

The United Nations will also set up a team of experts on “the rule of law and sexual violence in conflict”, described as an important tool for strengthening national justice systems and legal frameworks.

The team has already provided technical advice to governments in the Central African Republic, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Guinea, Liberia, Somalia and South Sudan.

Zainab Hawa Bangura, the U.N.’s special representative on sexual violence in armed conflict, points out that 20 years ago, the United Nations had provided “irrefutable evidence” of widespread and systematic rape in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

She said that during a recent visit to Bosnia – where an estimated 50,000 women had been raped or been victims of sexual violence – she discovered that, to date, only a handful of prosecutions had occurred.

“Thus the victims of those crimes continue to walk in shadow and shame, unable to lay the past to rest and move forward.”

More recently, in late June, the United Nations described as “unacceptable” several cases of rape of young girls in DRC.

Nine young girls, aged between 18 months and 12 years, were admitted to a hospital in South Kivu with marks of violence on their bodies and very serious internal wounds, resulting in the death of two.

“Such violence and abuse is unacceptable and must be brought to an end,” said Roger Meece, head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in DRC (MONUSCO).

“These abuses are said to be related to harmful traditional practices perpetrated by individuals who kidnap young children from their communities,” he said.

There have also been widespread reports of 135 women and girls allegedly raped by government soldiers in Minova in eastern DRC back in 2012.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France’s minister for women’s rights, told reporters at a U.N. press briefing last month that condemnation of such crimes was not enough and that perpetrators should be prosecuted.

“France was very disturbed by such atrocities, whether committed by a rebel group or by government troops,” she added.

Ouedrogo Boureila, who has been living in Mount Peko since 2006, fled the area when the security forces entered the area and began registering all inhabitants of the national park. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
DIX-HUIT MONTAGNES REGION, Côte d’Ivoire, Jul 9 2013 (IPS)

As the Côte d’Ivoire government clears its protected forests of illegal occupiers, particularly in the Dix-Huit Montagnes region, environmentalists say that this crucial move might lead to conflict in an already tense region.

“I am in favour of evictions, but it should not be brutal. These are fragile populations,” Egnankou Wadja Mathieu, professor at the Felix Houphouet-Boigny University’s Department of Botany and director of the NGO SOS Foret, told IPS.

In June, about 25,000 dwellers were violently evicted from the Niegre Forest in the Dix-Huit Montagnes region to the west of the country. Their settlements were destroyed with bulldozers.

Such an aggressive operation was not possible in Mount Peko National Park, which lies 200 km north of Niegre. Mount Peko used to form a chain of mountains covered with luxuriant green forests. Over the last 20 years, however, illegal settlers – the vast majority of whom are non-Ivorian West African citizens – have cut down trees to grow cocoa, destroying almost 70 percent of the 34,000 hectares of protected forest.

Illegal cocoa growers were lucky that this is an isolated reserve with narrow mud tracks that do not allow for heavy machinery or bulldozers.

Still, an operation launched on May 18 shocked some inhabitants of Mount Peko. When Emmanuel Ouedrogo saw Ivorian security forces approaching, he fled. “We had to leave. We do not have the strength to fight back.” The Burkinabe is worried about his future. He already lost some of the crops in its field. “I will lose everything. I do not know where to go next,” he told IPS, his voice shaky.

Ouedrogo Boureila, who has been living in Mount Peko since 2006, fled to Guézon-Tahouaké, a nearby village. “There was no violence when they launched operations. I left Mount Peko voluntarily,” he told IPS, adding that he will not return just yet.

A number of natural forests have been degraded over the course of the years in this West African nation. According to the European Union, more than 75 percent of all Ivorian forests have now disappeared.

“All classified forests will be rid of illegals. We have to stop the desert below the desert,” stated Mathieu Babaud Darret, Minister of Water and Forests, during a press conference on Jun. 13 to launch the voluntary partnership agreement between the EU and Côte d’Ivoire to stop illegal logging.

“Deforestation has a great impact. The forests create a microclimate that allows cocoa to grow. If we cut the forests, cocoa production will fall. And this will also affect fauna, flora, and climate change,” said Mathieu. Cocoa contributes to 10 percent of the country’s GDP and 40 percent of its foreign exchange earnings.

Mathieu said everyone, from forest rangers to local communities, was responsible for the degradation of the country’s forests.

But the situation in Mount Peko is a complicated one. The security forces were largely in the national park to arrest militia leader Amade Oueremi for his role in the country’s 2010–2011 post-election violence. More than 3,000 people died in Côte d’Ivoire after former President Laurent Gbagbo refuse to concede victory to Alassane Ouattara and relinquish power after a contested poll in November 2010.

Oueremi was said to have used the area as a base for more than 20 years and his heavily-armed lieutenants are still in the forest. Many believe that their expulsion could lead to more violence.

The Authority for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (ADDR), a governmental agency, is now registering all inhabitants of Mount Peko and disarming the militiamen among them. The government has told illegal forest dwellers that they can remain in the forest until the completion of this three-month registration operation, which will ultimately result in their relocation.

“The situation is under control. The majority of settlers went back to Mount Peko,” Gbane Mahama, the Prefect of Bangolo, who is regarded as the highest authority of the region, told IPS. “We need to work in cooperation with populations to find a sustainable solution.”

Retired Colonel-Major Patrice Kouassi, who supervised the ADDR operation, said that evictions needed to be carefully planned to avoid a crisis. “Relocating those people is a serious challenge. It will be difficult to evacuate people who have been living there for over 10 years and have economic interests.”

There is no census on how many people will have to be relocated from Mount Peko, but local officials believe there are about 20,000 people living in the national park, which has been a protected area since 1968.

“There is no land for agriculture in the region. This is why they settle in the forest,” explained Mathieu. The problem of lack of land and property titles has led to several violent clashes between native ethnic groups and foreign settlers who came from neighbouring countries to farm cocoa.

Robert Kouhi Dje, the traditional chief of Guézon-Tahouaké fears the potential for violence. “The village feels insecure,” he told IPS. And the heavy military presence does not reassure him. Among the settlers are several militias who were active during violent conflicts here over the last decade, notably an attack against the western city of Duekoue where more than 300 were killed during the post-electoral crisis.

Signs of rising tension are already appearing. A recent increase in road robbery and crime has led some locals to blame the Mount Peko squatters, but there is little proof so the blame game between the local communities and foreign settlers continues.

“We have to be careful not to blame blindly. We have no idea how many men carry weapons. But we cannot live with a state within the state. It is time to act sensibly now. For our future.”

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.

After 17 years of women struggling for parity with men in the household, Côte d’Ivoire’s legislature has finally adopted a law which establishes equal responsibility for legally married spouses. But not everyone is happy.

The law has sparked angry debate in this West African country, with some women expressing worries about taking on joint responsibility for family affairs.

According to the new law, passed on Nov. 21, families are now to be managed jointly by both spouses, who are together responsible for the moral and material care of the household. Under the previous law, the husband was designated as the sole head of the family.

The new law also specifies that both spouses should contribute to the costs of running a household in proportion to their ability. A partner who fails to comply can be forced to do so by the courts.

“This law’s got nothing to do with me. It is contrary to how we do it in my tradition (in the east of the country),” said Sandrine Ebin, an executive secretary who now lives with her husband in Abidjan, the Ivorian economic capital.

“For us, the custom is that it is a man who marries a woman and brings her into his house; and she submits to her husband. To now ask that we should be equal in the household threatens our morals. At my house, my husband will remain the boss,” she told IPS.

Mariam Tiené, an Abidjan trader originally from the north of the country, shares this opinion. “I’m already just one of three wives in a customary marriage, each of us struggling to get a civil marriage certificate. If I were to claim new status under this new law, for sure my husband would divorce me. I don’t want that,” she told IPS.

Constance Yaï, a former minister and a standard bearer for women’s emancipation during the 1990s, has no patience with views like these.

“I don’t want to deal with women who are against the new law,” she said. “For many of them, it is convenient to get married and be taken care of. There’s a class of women who are content with this situation. Frankly, I’m not fighting for them.”

The draft law was the source of sharp conflict between the ruling Rally of the Republicans (RDR) party and its ally, the Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI). An amendment put forward by the PDCI which sought to retain a man’s status as head of household led to the dissolution of the government on Nov. 14. The amendment was eventually withdrawn and the government was re-formed after the marriage law was passed.

“To strip the Family Code of the idea that there is a head of the household is not necessarily going to lead to greater rights for women,” warned legislator Yasmina Ouégnin, who voted against the law. “It is good to remember that our entire civilisation is built around a chief who must be respected.”

Hervé Yaoua, a public works engineer in Abidjan, is sympathetic. “What this law demands is co-management of the family. When they say that a man and a woman must become one, it’s to say that the woman too has the capacity to support the couple. That is what has been formalised,” he said.

His wife, Edwige, added that women have always taken on joint responsibility for a family’s morals, but she’s worried about the financial implications of the new law. “Women don’t want to contribute to expenses. That’s all!” she told IPS.

El Hadj Ibrahim Diarra, imam of a mosque in Agboville, in the south of the country, said “Islam does not allow the woman to jointly run the home with the man. It’s the man who is the sole head and that must remain so. It’s God’s law that says this and it is not for human beings to change it.”

Maxime Zoh, a pastor of a protestant church in Adjamé, in the centre of Abidjan, is also categorical: “In the absence of a man, a woman can be responsible for – but not the head of – the family. God has entrusted the home to the man, but not to the two.”

Abidjan lawyer Simone Assa is worried by responses like these and calls for work to raise awareness about the new legislation. “The law will need to be carefully explained and understood, because it could destabilise families. There is nothing binding at the root of this law; there are simply measures taken in the interest of the family,” she told IPS.

Minister for Solidarity, the Family, Women and Children Anne Désiré Ouloto explained her view. “With the new law, the woman is no longer simply a helpmeet for her husband in the running of a household. She doesn’t have to wait until her husband is absent or indisposed to step in. Shared responsibility is a source of balance for a couple.”

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.”

Women farmers in Côte d’Ivoire are achieving greater autonomy and economic independence thanks to new varieties of cassava.

Cassava is an important staple food in this West African country according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, second only to yams, a similar starchy tuber.

Farmers in the southern and eastern parts of the country have taken up three high-yielding varieties of cassava, known as Bocou 1, 2 and 3, which are resistant to disease and pests, according to Boni N’zué, the coordinator of the Cassava Project, an initiative launched in 2008 by the country’s National Centre for Agricultural Research.

“They can produce 32 to 34 tonnes per hectare per year, compared to five tonnes per hectare from traditional cassava varieties,” he told IPS. 

Eight years ago, when her family’s 10 hectare landholding in the southern village of Dabou was divided up, Henriette Adou was allocated a one-hectare plot. The 35-year-old farmer began cultivating it, but when her efforts in the 2007-2008 season produced a harvest of less than three tonnes, she gave up farming for a year.

“But friends advised me to switch to the new cassava varieties and I tried them out in 2009-2010. The results have been even better than I hoped,” Adou told IPS.

Her 2010 harvest of the Bocou 1 variety amounted to 33 tonnes. In 2011 she planted both Bocou 1 and 2 and harvested more than 65 tonnes. With cassava selling for around 48 dollars per tonne, her income came to 3,000 dollars last year.

Now Adou is thinking about expanding her field. “I asked my brothers to let me farm another hectare, but only one of them agreed. The others refused, saying that I’m not entitled to any more than what I got when the land was divided up,” she said.

Before leaving for the fields, Adou told IPS she had put money aside for a house which she hopes to finish building after the sale of her harvest next year. “I’m putting it up at my own pace because I’ve become the head of the family,” she said with a smile.

Her ambitions go beyond simply selling more cassava. Adou wants to set up an operation to process and market various cassava products, especially attiéké – a popular food in Côte d’Ivoire and neighbouring countries for which a pungent, tasty fufu is made by peeling, boiling and fermenting cassava, which is then drained, dried and steamed.

“I hope to get started processing cassava within the next two years,” she told IPS.

Albertine Niamien, 37, is already further along that road. A member of the Association of Women Attiéké Producers (APAD), she also attributes her good fortune to new cassava varieties.

“It’s three years now since I started planting Bocou 1 and 2. When I took over three hectares of family land, everyone supported me. We trained two teams of five – some to work on processing and others on marketing,” Niamien told IPS.

She told IPS that her annual income, which ranges between 4,000 and 8,000 dollars, has allowed her to cover essential needs for the ten members of her family.

APAD has more than 150 members, according to its president, Véronique Lathe. She is in charge of raising awareness for a cooperative of women, with the aim of meeting the challenge of maintaining quality and moving towards greater industrialisation of attiéké production.

“There are more than a thousand women growing cassava and making attiéké. They need to join the association,” Lathe said. “They will soon see that we’ll achieve significant sales which will allow us to be independent.”

At Abengourou, in the east of the country, Florence N’dri, 40, and Cécile Adjoua, 41, are among the 3,000 growers of the new cassava varieties, who sell almost all of their output to a foreign-owned business that has set up in Côte d’Ivoire.

The two women are each cultivating just half a hectare, producing a yield of around 20 tonnes. “This small harvest brought in about 400,000 CFA francs (800 dollars). It’s not yet enough, but I have managed to save a bit of money,” N’dri told IPS.

Three years ago, the producers in the region harvested a total of 25,000 tonnes of cassava. In 2011, their collective output was 32,000 tonnes, worth about 1.5 million dollars. Three quarters of the output was sold to the foreign business, and the rest on the local market.

“The guarantee of having a market is very motivating. Now, we’re fighting so that our husbands and parents will grant us larger plots,” said Adjoua, whose spouse is eyeing her land to extend his rubber plantation.

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.”

Even as Côte d’Ivoire gradually recovers from the bloody events of the 2010-2011 post-electoral crisis, massacres in the western part of the country and the frequent sound of gunfire in the economic capital, Abidjan, are signs of the long road ahead.

More than a year after Alassane Ouattara became president, heavily armed men are still a common sight in the streets of Abidjan and other parts of the western, central and eastern regions of the country.

In Abobo, Adjamé and Yopougon, three large districts of Abidjan, soldiers wearing a variety of uniforms – presented variously by the authorities as demobilised fighters or regular army troops – control traffic and carry out routine checks.

But these soldiers also unnerve residents with their uncontrolled use of weapons. For example on Jul. 24, a confrontation between military police and members of the FRCI, the regular army, led to three deaths. And in March, a young man was murdered in the street in the same areas by soldiers demanding 600 CFA francs (equivalent to around 1.20 dollars).

During a traffic stop in Yopougon on Jul. 27, FRCI troops fired on a taxi whose driver had refused to follow their orders. Three passengers were seriously injured, according to witnesses.

Two days later, in Abengourou, in the east of the country, another taxi was shot at by armed men, leading to five casualties, according to hospital sources.

These fighters carry out systematic raids, make arrests, and detain people for long periods, says the Ivorian Human Rights League (LIDHO), a non-governmental organisation based in Abidjan.

“What’s worrying is that these soldiers don’t seem to answer to a chain of command. Their actions can no longer be considered isolated incidents, since such things have occurred repeatedly,” said René Hokou Legré, president of LIDHO.

Since December 2011, the FRCI and the dozos – traditional hunters who have supported the regular army – have been blamed by many for killing innocent people.

The FRCI killed six people following an altercation between a soldier and a civilian last December in Vavoua, in the west central region of the country. A week later, soldiers killed four in the southern town of Sikensi, in nearly identical circumstances.

In mid-February 2012, confrontations between the FRCI and residents of the eastern county of Arrah led to a dozen deaths, of mainly civilians; community members are now demanding that the soldiers leave the area.

“Everyone must understand that private justice is unacceptable in a state of law. Recourse to the legal authorities remains the legitimate way to resolve all differences, no matter their nature,” said Yacouba Doumbia, interim president of the Ivorian Human Rights Movement (MIDH), based in Abidjan.

Perhaps the most worrying single incident took place in the western town of Duékoué on Jul. 20. In apparent reprisal for the murder of four people during a robbery in an ethnic Malinké neighbourhood of the town, a group launched an attack on a displaced persons camp mostly inhabited by members of the Guéré ethnic group. Officially, 11 people were killed, several of them shot to death.

Human rights organisations have blamed dozo traditional hunters, FRCI soldiers and a lack of a response by United Nations peacekeepers stationed in the town.

On national television on Jul. 22, the defense minister, Paul Koffi Koffi, said that ex-members of a militia that supported the former president, Laurent Gbagbo, were living in the camp, and regularly left it to commit abuses.

Abidjan-based political scientist Marcellin Tanon said he sees a kind of “carelessness” on the part of the authorities. “Each time, the government has tried to justify abusive acts and clear the armed forces of blame. So the soldiers act with complete impunity and the events in Duékoué must be considered the culmination of a series of impunities.”

Tanon believes the situation is due to the failure of a disarmament process for combatants in various conflicts going back to the 2002 rebellion which divided the country for nearly a decade.

His view is shared by Maurice Zagol, another political scientist based in Abidjan. “The problem presented by these soldiers, who helped President Ouattara to come to power, is a complex one. To use force to fight them would open the way for another rebellion,” Zagol told IPS.

“Still, we must carry out a complete disarmament of ex-combatants, because in the long term we have to fear the population will become fed up and start to doubt the legitimacy of the new regime,” said Zagol.

Interviewed by phone, defence ministry spokesperson Captain Léon Allah insisted that the army high command was taking all necessary steps to resolve the problem of circulation of arms and the strong presence of soldiers in the streets.

Nine women in the northern Côte d’Ivoire town of Katiola have been convicted for carrying out female genital mutilation – the first time that a 1998 law banning FGM has been applied.

The women were found guilty of excising thirty girls aged between 10 and 15 in February. They were each sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay a fine equivalent to roughly 100 dollars.

“We have been waiting a long time for a boost in the fight against this scourge,” said Rachel Gogoua in the Ivorian economic capital, Abidjan, where she heads the National Organisation for Children, Women and the Family (ONEF), a non-governmental organisation that campaigns against FGM.

“The time for awareness-raising is over: now we need to sanction perpetrators.”

The Katiola court handed down the sentences on Jul 18, but in view of the women’s ages – ranging between 46 and 91 years old – decided none will actually have to spend time in prison. Gogoua told IPS she feels the convicted women should serve at least a token amount of jail time to drive home the message to others still practicing excision in many parts of the country.

“The law forbidding these practices was passed in 1998 and we have carried out extensive public education about it. In the end, we have to realise that these women are making fools of us. They are well aware of the law, but they defied it under the pretext of customary practice and tradition,” said Gogoua.

Despite the 1998 law, genital mutilation is still widespread in Côte d’Ivoire, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Based on surveys carried out in 2006, UNICEF estimates that 36 percent of Ivorian women have undergone excision, making it one of the worst affected countries in Africa.

Female genital mutilation is the complete or partial removal of the external genitals of a woman, according to the World Health Organization. This can involve the vulva, the major and minor labia, the clitoris, as well as the urinary and vaginal tracts.

The practice is most common in the northern and northwestern parts of the country, where nearly 88 percent of women are affected, and in the west, where the prevalence rate is 73 percent, according to UNICEF.

Massandjé Timité, 33, is originally from Marandallah, in the north.

“I still feel the pain from my excision today, 15 years later,” she told IPS. “It was a terrible trauma. The wounds healed very slowly, and with each day that passed, I feared the worst.”

Timité said that to evoke tradition to justify the continuation of FGM is to make a superficial argument. “When an excision is clumsily executed, as it was in my case, no one comes to help you. Does tradition accept that a woman should lose the very thing that allows her to give life?”

Despite numerous awareness campaigns and repeated promises by excisors, FGM continues to be practiced.

“Amongst us, the Wobé (an ethnic group in the west), it’s a shameful thing to be called ‘zoégbé’ (an un-excised woman),” explained Cécile Gnowahou, 26, who went through the procedure when she was 11.

“You don’t have the right to marry and you are often ridiculed in the village. In this context, our parents hear the message, but the cultural reality overrides it. This is a custom that has existed since before our parents’ grandparents’ time,” she said.

“Excision causes much more harm than one thinks,” said Gnowahou. “Sometimes it even leads to the victim dying, yet even when these things happen, it is amicably resolved between families.”

Gnowahou’s own experience illustrates the social dilemma that FGM presents many Ivorian women with. “Not only was I unable to get married following the prolonged bleeding that I suffered, but now times have changed and any man who knows about my status as an excised woman automatically rejects me,” she said.

But she believes that if the law against female genital mutilation is applied, it would begin to reduce the prevalence of FGM.

Her sentiments were echoed by Raymonde Goudou Coffie, Côte d’Ivoire’s Minister for the Family, Women and Children, who said that the successful prosecution in Katiola is only a beginning. The minister said the law would be applied in full against practices which affront human dignity, particularly that of women.

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.”

A shiver ran down Habiba Kanaté’s* spine when she read about a policeman shooting and killing his wife in Abidjan, the economic capital of Côte d’Ivoire. “That could have been me,” she said.

IPS met the 28-year-old at a social centre in the south Abidjan neighbourhood of Treichville, one of a number of women there seeking help with domestic violence.

“There hasn’t been a single day in the past three months when I haven’t been insulted, threatened or struck by my husband,” said the mother of three.

“My husband tells me off for challenging him when he makes a decision that I don’t agree with. It’s humiliating and frustrating.”

Also at the Treichville centre was Céline Konan*, the light wounds on her face still open. “I was beaten twice in the space of a week – in front of the children – just because my partner was in a bad mood.”

She told IPS she also had pain in her abdomen where her husband had kicked her.

And it wasn’t Konan’s first visit to the centre: social workers had already come to her home several times, asking her partner to desist. “Unfortunately, it’s had no effect,” she said.

Another regular visitor at the centre was Juliette Téo*. “You can’t count the marks on my cheeks from slaps. Each time, I’ve lost at least two teeth,” she said.

Téo said it was her partner beat her because she complained about his infidelity. “My husband told me that he’s the head of the household and each time I cause a scene, I’ll be corrected,” she said.

In June, the International Rescue Committee, a U.S. based non-governmental organisation, published a report on domestic violence in Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone, finding that abuse including – burning, battery, rape and psychological violence – is common in all three West African countries. The report stated that more than 60 percent of women in the countries examined are survivors of violence, primarily by their intimate partners.

Gladys Marie-Angela Asso Bally, director of the Treichville centre, told IPS increasing numbers of women were coming for help. “Since the post-electoral crisis, men have become more violent in their households than in the past. From two or three cases, we’ve passed to dozens to deal with every day.”

Each week the centre does its best to offer psychological help and legal assistance to hundreds of victims of all kinds of violence.

“Because of cultural and religious norms, we are really struggling to fight against this scourge,” explained Asso Bally. “Many women are afraid to testify. They think that they will end up putting their husbands in prison or chase them out of their homes.”

Kanaté’s concerns illustrate the challenge. “Imagine if my husband was in prison,” she asked, “where would I find the means to support him and the children? And my in-laws? What will they think knowing that I was at the root of such a situation?”

The centre’s director said the other difficulty is that the relevant law, passed in 1981, which in her view is ineffective in the fight against domestic violence.

“The law asks women to provide hard evidence that they have been beaten. Or else the man must be caught in the very act of aggression in order to be prosecuted. It’s as if one is waiting for someone to die before reacting,” said Asso Bally.

In early July, Sarah Fadiga Sako, the first vice-president of the National Assembly, said the next revision of the Personal and Family Code would strengthen the legislation to support more determined efforts against the evils of domestic violence.

But Fanta Coulibaly, who heads the National Commission To Fight Against Violence Against Women and Children at the Ministry of Family, Women and Children, believes that eradicating domestic abuse requires action on several fronts.

“The phenomenon is alarming and the law alone is not enough,” said Coulibaly. “The whole population needs to work against this evil,” said Coulibaly, calling for an awareness campaign against violence in households in communities.

“It’s irresponsible for men to continue to behave like this. For me, if (putting offenders in) prison is a problem, then these people need to be sentenced to forced labour in order to educate them,” said Ferdinand Kouassi, a construction entrepreneur in Abidjan.

*Names have been changed.

Thousands of Ivorian children were separated from their parents during the post-election violence in 2011. / Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Fulgence Zamblé
ABIDJAN, Jun 6 2012 (IPS)

Twelve-year-old Ahmed* pauses on his crutches in the narrow lane that leads from his house to the main road, glancing at the bullet holes still visible on the walls here in the Abobo Park 18 area of Abidjan. He sighs, then speeds up again to catch the bus that will take him downtown to the Adjamé quarter.

In the bag on his back, he carries soapy water, a brush, and a tin of polish, to clean and wax the shoes of his clients. “My parents gave me these supplies three weeks ago. Along with my new friends, I go out to work each day with a smile. Sometimes, I come back with enough money, but often with only a little.”

In March 2011, during Côte d’Ivoire’s post-electoral crisis, Ahmed was forced to carry ammunition for fighters in his home neighbourhood. He was drawn into the midst of a violent clash between insurgents and pro-government forces. The West African nation was shaken by six months of violence and terror when former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede power to Alassane Ouattara who won the November 2010 presidential elections. Thousands of people suffered rape, torture and other violence as a result.

“The sound of weapons was deafening. I threw myself down and cried,” he told IPS. “Then I was hit on my left leg, which later had to be amputated.”

Ahmed has since dropped out of school, and he’s starting to get used to his new life, working as a shoeshine boy far from home, said his father, Youssouf Traoré. “After he was hurt, my son spent every day moody and isolated. I felt that after going through such drama, something was not right… We needed to find him something to do, something that would give him hope again,” he told IPS.

At Abidjan’s Marcory market, where women come to have their hair plaited, Solange* helps her older sister create the elaborate, time-consuming braids of her clients. The 15-year-old was gang raped during the crisis, at Yopougon, another part of the city. Still traumatised, she no longer attends school.

“I didn’t want to be laughed at by my classmates every time I approached. So I spend my time here, with my sister. The work she gives me is rebuilding my spirits,” she told IPS. “Most importantly, it keeps me from thinking about what I’ve been through.”

Solange has not had any counselling or other psychosocial support, according to her sister.

Fabrice*, 10, and Adjaratou*, 13, are more fortunate. They too were in Yopougon during the crisis, and have suffered from mental health problems brought on by the incessant firing of heavy weapons. But for the past six weeks, they have been looked after by a non-governmental organisation called Enfance et Développement (Childhood and Development), based in Abidjan.

Like many of their peers, they have taken up a trade. Fabrice has dropped out of school to work as a cobbler, and Adjaratou – who has never gone to school – sells drinking water on the street in small bags.

“With this job,” Fabrice said, “my life’s changed. I was so absent-minded, but I’ve learned to do the best I can in whatever I do, without ever talking about war or weapons…”

These four children are just a few of the many young victims of the post-election crisis that gripped Côte d’Ivoire from December 2010 to April 2011.

Between November 2010 and September 2011, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the NGO Save the Children recorded 1,121 cases of grave violations committed against women or children during the crisis.

This total – representing only a fraction of the real number – includes 643 children, among them 182 survivors of rape, 19 who were pressed into service by one or another armed group, 13 deaths and 56 who were seriously injured.

“Most of these crimes have gone unpunished, because only 52 cases are presently the subject of legal proceedings – despite more than half the victims knowing the perpetrators,” said UNICEF. Of the cases before the courts, 27 involve rape and 25 other kinds of sexual attacks.

Two thirds of the children covered by the joint survey have received no support of any kind. One in four of these victims has benefited from medical assistance. And of the rape victims, only 44 percent have seen a doctor, while 39 percent have not had any medical care.

“Through recreational activities, just helping them to have fun, we have reduced the trauma these children are suffering,” said Josiane Niamké, president of Enfance et Développement. “And we have encouraged their parents to keep them busy, to help heal their pain.”

Francis Gnaly, an Abidjan psychiatrist, said that children must always be listened to and supported, as well as provided outlets for distraction. But “This is unfortunately not happening,” he said.

The psychiatrist said that engaging children affected by the conflict in various activities is an excellent means to repair their damaged psyches.

“There are victims who have been quick to get compensation or care to heal their wounds,” he said. But there are many others who are still waiting for psychological assistance to avoid mental health issues or depression.”

*(Names have been changed to protect privacy.)