UNITED NATIONS TO PULL NON-ESSENTIAL STAFF OUT OF IVORY COAST
The United Nations has decided to pull its non-essential staff out of Ivory Coast, riven by a five-month rebel war, diplomatic sources said on Thursday.
Dozens of UN staff will leave the west African country after the world body declared Ivory Coast to be in phase 4 on a five-phase risk scale.
The last phase on the UN risk scale necessitates the total withdrawal of staff. The measure was decided in New York and took effect on February 5.
The declaration means that the staff of some 30 of the 110 international bodies operating in the country will leave Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer. It also means that no UN official can visit Ivory Coast without the express authorisation of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The UN decision will have an impact on the African Development Bank (AfDB) which had decided to move its headquarters from Abidjan if the UN declared phase four in Ivory Coast.
A source at the AfDB said: ”It’s almost automatic, the decision will now only be a formality.”
The AfDB, based in Abidjan since its creation in 1963, was launched with a start-up capital of some $250-million and has grown into a $33-billion multinational bank.
The Ivorian government has bristled at suggestions that the bank might move and repeatedly stressed that it had ensured the security of AfDB officials and their property since 1963.
The presence of the AfDB in Ivory Coast is seen as a feather in the cap for the country, once regarded as a haven of peace and prosperity in troubled west Africa but rocked by instability since a coup — the first in its history — in December 1999. The current war was sparked by a rebel uprising on September 19 last year, during which insurgents opposed to the government of President Laurent Gbagbo took control of the northern half of the country.
Former colonial power France last month hosted nine days of talks between the protagonists in the war — the rebels and political parties — and managed to get all sides to agree to a peace deal which set up a unity government that would include rebels in key seats, and clipped Gbagbo’s powers.
Gbagbo, who did not attend the French-brokered talks, accepted the deal at a summit in Paris, but cast doubt on his commitment to the deal when he called it a set of proposals on his return to Ivory Coast.
The armed forces and five leading political parties have said they will not accept rebels in key government posts as provided by the accord.
The deal has ignited the anger of masses of pro-Gbagbo Ivorians and led to anti-French riots and violence in the main city, Abidjan, prompting Paris to advise its nationals to leave its former star west African colony. – Sapa-AFP