Warring factions in Côte d’Ivoire are set to take tentative steps towards peace on Thursday with voter registration trials and the beginnings of a disarmament process in the divided West African country.
After numerous false starts and failed ceasefires, a process will be launched to determine who among the Côte d’Ivoire’s 16-million inhabitants will be qualified to vote in United Nations-supervised general and presidential elections slated for October.
Identification is a sensitive issue in Côte d’Ivoire, where at least a quarter of the population is foreign according to the last population census, conducted in 1998.
One of the root causes of the civil war, sparked by a failed coup in 2002, was the sidelining from elections of many political opponents on the basis that they were not Ivorian.
Notably, former prime minister Alassane Ouattara was barred from running in the last presidential election because one of his parents was from Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire’s northern neighbour.
Identification has been a key demand for rebels who claim that most northerners have been marginalised in Côte d’Ivoire, once a bastion of peace and stability in West Africa.
Seven days of public hearings at seven test sites scattered across the country will target Ivorians aged 13 years in the first stage of a citizenship census.
Those without papers will be issued birth certificates on the basis of confirmation by community leaders or village elders. Doctors will estimate the applicants’ ages.
The voter identification process was intended to coincide with disarmament of tens of thousands of combatants from both the government and New Forces rebels who control the north of the country, but the two sides have yet to agree on all the details.
The process should start on Thursday with the pre-grouping of combatants from all the armed groups at about 110 assembly sites across the country.
The operation is designed to last 10 days, after which disarmament and demobilisation should begin, but late on Wednesday loyalist and rebel military leaders failed to hammer out the terms.
Talks on resolving the impasse are to resume only on May 31. The disarmament process is to involve 42 500 New Forces rebels, 5 000 regular army troops and 12 000 members of hardline militias loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo.
Gbagbo and his supporters have complained that if the identification process takes place while rebels still control the north, some non-Ivorians could obtain citizenship fraudulently and vote in the elections.
After arguing for months over which process should come first, Gbagbo’s side and the rebels finally agreed last month under heavy international pressure that disarmament and identification of the electorate should be carried out simultaneously.
At the end of the trial exercise next week, about 150 public hearing centres are to launch the full-out identification process. – Sapa-AFP