A year after the fighting stopped in Côte d’Ivoire the West African country that was seen as a regional model appears to have descended into endemic violence and disorder.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has called for 6 000 peacekeepers to be sent there. However, the United States, which pays more than 25% of the world organisation’s peacekeeping bill, looks unlikely to approve this.
The Linus-Marcoussis Peace Accord signed outside Paris on January 24 last year is already being policed by 4 000 French troops and 1 600 West African soldiers. While the fighting has stopped and food is being distributed around the country, the level of militia activity is high.
Politically the country is torn by suspicion and is a long way from any realistic hope of reconciliation.
Before the civil war, about a third of the country’s 16-million inhabitants were immigrants. Many of them have fled the fighting, but those who have remained are suspected of having supported the rebels and have become victims of xenophobia.
Immigrants are driven off their land by neighbours who seize their crops. Instead of being protected, they are harassed by the security forces.
At least one million Ivorians have been made homeless by the war, although this figure is disguised by the tradition of taking in family members in distress. The humanitarian problems posed by these internally displaced persons are thus transferred and delayed.
President Laurent Gbagbo is presiding over a broad-based government of national reconciliation that includes nine rebel ministers.
His tardiness in implementing reforms demanded by the peace deal has caused the rebels to drag their feet on disarmament. The area they control in the north of the country remains without civil authority.
Vital programmes like rehabilitating child soldiers are running late by six months or more.
Warlords battle one another in the rebel-controlled north, while in other parts of the country rebels and renegade police set up checkpoints to extort money from transporters and passengers.
UN human rights officer Guillaume Ngefa Atondoko Andali says it is vital that the rule of law is restored.
”On the government side, court judgements are being compromised. Judges are under pressure. People are detained without regard for the rule of law. Check points are a prime opportunity for arrests, humiliation, ransack and extortion.”
Humanitarian operations are made very difficult by outlaws siphoning off food and supplies destined for the needy.
Efforts to restore education and health-care facilities to these areas are equally hampered.
In this climate, economic recovery remains a distant dream.
Production of cocoa, the country’s main source of income, has fallen by more than 20% in the past year.