Ivory Coast unrestTensions worsen in divided country

Ivory Coast has been split in two since a failed coup in 2002 developed into a full-scale rebellion against the government. Rebels hold the north and west, while government forces control the rest of the country. A peace deal in March 2007 paved the way towards reunification of the war-torn country, but violence escalated again following presidential elections in 2010.

• Hundreds of thousands still uprooted by violence
• World's largest cocoa producer
• Thousands of former child soldiers

Fears of a return to civil war escalated at the end of 2010 when President Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede power to Alassane Ouattara, the internationally-recognised winner of presidential elections.

Clashes between pro-Gbagbo and pro-Ouattara forces have displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

The majority are displaced internally but thousands have also fled to neighbouring countries, primarily Liberia, triggering fears that a spiralling exodus from Ivory Coast will threaten regional peace.

The presidential elections were a key part of the country's peace process.

Until the 1990s, Ivory Coast was a model of peace and prosperity as the world's largest cocoa producer and a major coffee exporter. Its fertile southwest was a magnet for farmers in neighbouring countries and the north of Ivory Coast.

But when cocoa prices dropped in the mid-1980s, the economy went into gradual decline, exposing tensions between people with foreign roots, northern Ivorians and those native to the south.

These tensions escalated into an all-out rebellion against the government in 2002, which split the country in half, separating the rebel-held north from the government-controlled south. French and U.N. soldiers patrolled a buffer zone between the two regions.

A comprehensive ceasefire was signed in 2003, but the West African country remained tense and divided. Several attempts to form a power-sharing government failed.

A peace deal signed in March 2007 between the government and rebel forces raised the possibility of lasting peace after five years of violence and instability.

The agreement paved the way for the formation of a unity government including senior rebel figures and set the scene for fresh elections.

That year, the United Nations and France withdrew peacekeeping troops from the buffer zone which was dismantled under the accord. The overall size of the U.N. force in the country remained the same. The U.N. troop size grew from 7,000 in 2004 to 9,000 in January 2011.

Fears of a return to civil war escalated at the end of 2010 when the incumbent Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede power after losing presidential elections to rival Alassane Ouattara. The elections - a key part of the peace process – had been delayed several times since 2005. They finally took place in October 2010, with a run-off vote in November.

Cocoa boom years

Ivory Coast was ruled by southern President Felix Houphouet-Boigny between 1960 when Ivory Coast gained independence from France until his death in 1993.

He encouraged people from Ivory Coast and overseas to move to the fertile southwest of the country to grow cocoa and coffee.

By the 1980s, immigrants from Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea made up a quarter of the population, according to International Crisis Group (ICG), and the economy was booming.

But a drop in global cocoa prices pushed the country into economic decline from the mid-1980s, and many urban white-collar workers were forced to return to farming, increasing competition for land.

Power struggle

The ensuing power struggle after Houphouet-Boigny's death in 1993 exposed deep divisions between the north and south along ethnic, political and religious lines. It culminated in a 1999 coup overthrowing Houphouet-Boigny's successor, Henri Konan Bedie.

The coup sent an already deteriorating situation completely off the tracks and a gradual process of ethnic cleansing followed, ICG said.

Immigrants and their descendants, as well as people from northern Ivory Coast, were targeted in sporadic massacres and gradually forced away from their cocoa plantations. These were then taken over by people claiming to be natives of the southwest.

The leader of the 1999 coup, General Robert Guei, introduced a new constitution barring people from running for president unless both parents were Ivorian. This was used to exclude his main rival, Alassane Ouattara, a former prime minister and a Muslim from the north whose mother was from Burkina Faso.

Despite these efforts, Guei lost the 2000 elections to the current president, Laurent Gbagbo, a Christian from the south and leader of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI).

The 2001 municipal elections marked a turning point in the political power struggle, as all political parties were allowed to stand.

Once Ouattara's Rally of the Republicans (RDR) party had won the largest number of communes in the vote, Gbagbo began to pursue a policy of reconciliation, culminating in a January 2002 summit at which Bedie, Guei, Gbagbo and Ouattara agreed to form a new government of national unity and set up a body to address questions over land ownership, especially acute in the southwest.

The new government was formed in August 2002. The controversial issue of Ouattara's nationality was resolved and he was given a nationality certificate.

A country divided

A coup attempt by a group of soldiers in September 2002 put an early end to the unity government.

The coup failed but the accompanying violence escalated into a full-scale rebellion that split the country in two. Rebels seized the north of the country and the south remained under the control of Gbagbo's government. Guei was killed in the unrest.

Amid rumours that the coup was supported by foreign agents, thousands of migrant workers and refugees were targeted by security forces.

According to the United Nations, 20,000 people - mostly foreign workers - were displaced from Abidjan, the commercial capital.

Peace talks

Peace talks began before long, and by January 2003 the rivals had agreed to a French-brokered peace deal. It included forming another power-sharing government, setting up an independent electoral commission to organise elections, and changing the law to make it easier for people with foreign roots to become citizens and own land.

In July that year the parties formally declared an end to the war and agreed to a timetable for disarmament and reintegration, but distrust and suspicion abounded on both sides.

The main rebel group - New Forces (FN) - pulled out of the government in September 2003, accusing President Gbagbo of deliberately dragging his feet on implementing the peace agreement.

In March 2004, the government cracked down on a banned opposition rally in the main commercial city of Abidjan, killing at least 120 civilians, according to the United Nations. Opposition parties withdrew from the government in protest.

The United Nations launched a peacekeeping operation in Ivory Coast the following month, taking command of regional troops in the country.

The situation reached a new crisis point when the government launched air strikes against rebels in November 2004, killing nine French peacekeepers. In response France destroyed a large part of the government air force, which led to anti-French riots in Abidjan and the evacuation of thousands of French residents.

Fearing a full-scale war that could destabilise the entire region, the U.N. Security Council swiftly imposed an arms embargo.

In December 2004, South African President Thabo Mbeki, under the auspices of the African Union, persuaded the government and rebels to agree a new timetable to implement the 2003 peace plan. The law was also changed to allow people with foreign parents to stand in presidential elections, meaning Ouattara could run.

The United Nations and African Union then brokered several peace deals to pave the way for elections. However rebel, government and opposition sides squabbled over how to implement them and, although a tentative peace held, elections were postponed several times. The stickiest issues were disarming militia groups, naturalising residents with foreign origins, registering voters, and reuniting the country.

In the absence of elections, the United Nations extended President Gbagbo's term to allow him to stay in position, although with limited powers. The decision was based on recommendations by the African Union and West African leaders. And in 2005 mediators Mbeki and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed as interim prime minister Charles Konan Banny, a former governor of West Africa's central bank, to prepare the country for elections.

The president boycotted a U.N.-sponsored peace summit in September 2006 and said he was going to come up with his own peace plan. He reiterated that he would remain president until elections.

A major breakthrough was reached in March 2007, when President Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro signed a peace deal, which involved setting up a new transitional government with Soro as prime minister. The Ouagadougou Agreement also included merging FN and national security forces and dismantling the buffer zone.

An amnesty declared in April 2007 for crimes committed by soldiers and civilians against the state was widely welcomed as a boost to the peace deal.

Government troops and rebels both pulled back from their frontline positions in December 2007. Rebels began disarming in May 2008 but, by 2010, thousands of rebels and pro-government militias had not yet disarmed.

Former rebels handed over 10 northern zones to civilian administrators in May 2009.

In October 2009 the U.N. Security Council said both the government and FN rebel group had broken an international arms embargo and rearmed, and illegal diamond mining had grown in areas under rebel control. The U.N. renewed its embargoes on arms and diamond trading for another year, saying it was necessary to keep up the pressure.

The U.N. Security Council banned diamond exports in 2005 to stop rebels using them to buy arms illicitly.

In January and February 2010, tensions escalated. Violent protests broke out over preparations for the elections, which included plans to remove hundreds of thousands of people from the electoral list because of doubts over their Ivorian nationality.

Gbagbo dissolved the government and the independent electoral commission, triggering further unrest. Opposition party leaders responded by ending their recognition of Gbagbo as head of state.

That same month Soro formed a new government with both main opposition parties, and the opposition called off the protests.

Presidential elections finally took place in October 2010, with a run-off vote in November between Gbagbo and former IMF official Alassane Ouattara. The United Nations sent an additional 500 troops to bolster security ahead of the polls.

The independent electoral commission declared Ouattara winner, saying he won 54 percent of the vote and Gbagbo 46 percent. The announcement was overturned by the Constitutional Council which declared Gbagbo the victor. The United Nations, African Union, regional body ECOWAS, United States and France said Ouattara had won.

Amid rising tensions, Gbagbo and Ouattara both declared themselves president and separately took the presidential oath in December. In February 2011, the ceasefire was broken and violence escalated between armed groups supporting the two candidates.

Gbagbo was captured in April 2011 by forces loyal to Ouattara, and both sides appealed for an end to the fighting.

Violence and displacement

The 2010 political breakdown in the main city of Abidjan exacerbated existing tensions and the renewed fighting has forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, mainly in Abidjan and the country's west.

The majority are displaced internally, but many have also fled across the border to Liberia. A few have travelled to Togo, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Mali.

In March 2011, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf warned that the sudden influx of refugees was threatening peace in Ivory Coast's neighbours, which are still recovering from years of war.

In Ivory Coast, both sides of the conflict have targeted aid agencies and armed groups warned many of the displaced not to receive U.N. aid, the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said in March 2011. UNHCR monitoring teams also found that people were being prevented from leaving areas of fighting, or being forced to give up cash or other possessions in order to be allowed to leave.

Even before the fighting broke out again, widespread violence and the poor state of roads and bridges made it difficult for aid agencies to access parts of the country, especially in the west and in northern areas under FN control.

After the March 2007 peace deal, some displaced began returning home, but ongoing insecurity, criminality, human rights abuses and - especially in the west - longstanding land disputes prevented people from returning home, IDMC said.

No national data is available on the numbers of displaced, but UNHCR estimated there were 519,000 displaced in June 2010 - a drop from 709,000 in 2008. Most uprooted people lived with host communities, but after years of economic crisis and insecurity many host families struggled to cope, according to IDMC.

In March 2011, the number of people displaced by the renewed fighting was estimated at 460,000 – including 90,000 who fled to Liberia – UNHCR said.

Government forces and FN rebels carry out widespread extortion, racketeering and other human rights abuses including rape. Extortion is most severe in the rebel-held north, where rebels are extorting the equivalent of millions of dollars annually at checkpoints and through other rackets, UNHCR said.

Pro-government militia groups have wrought havoc on the civilian population in the west. Some began disarming in mid-2007, but they are still feared in villages, where people blame them for murders, violence, stealing and attacks on cocoa-carrying trucks. The local population says that disarming the militias is paramount.

People in the west also suffer from well-armed criminal gangs who regularly attack, rob and rape civilians, Human Rights Watch said in October 2010.

The United Nations says the large number of illegal light weapons and small arms is partly to blame for the climate of violence and persistent state of insecurity across the country.

Health worries

During the 2002 clashes, most government staff - including medical workers and teachers - fled the north. Health, education, water and sewage services collapsed in the areas controlled by the New Forces rebel group, which covered about 60 percent of the country.

In the relative peace that followed, health centres gradually opened in the north and west of the country, and the two sides worked to pick up the pieces at hospitals and clinics that were abandoned, looted or destroyed. Medical supplies began flowing again, after drying up during the conflict.

Aid agencies scaled down emergency operations and concentrated instead on early recovery and development programmes.

But that all changed with the post-2010 election violence, and the large numbers of displaced and disruption caused by the renewed fighting forced aid agencies to change their priorities.

People in the north and west lost water and electricity supplies because of the fighting, badly affecting those displaced and living in camps.

The U.N.'s World Health Organization said in Feb. 2011 that only 20 percent of medical staff were in place in the west, and warned that families in the region had only limited food supplies from the November-January harvest.

Many medical facilities in the north and west shut down, and the state pharmacy system was at risk of collapse, the United Nations said in March 2011.

Ivory Coast has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in West Africa, with 3.4 percent of adults living with the virus, according to the Joint U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) 2010 report.

Poor water supply is another major concern, with acute water shortages in the north and poor quality water in urban areas. Many do not have proper sewage systems, putting them at risk of diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, measles and poliomyelitis.

The country's economic collapse, continued insecurity and a large influx of national and international soldiers mean that many women have been forced to offer sex in exchange for food, protection or money.

Suffering children

An estimated 800,000 children have been unable to attend school since teachers followed a December 2010 call for civil disobedience launched by the pro-Ouattara coalition, and schools were closed.

Thousands of children have also been displaced in the latest violence, and many of those who are still at home have been unable to reach school because of the fighting.

This is not the first time children's education has been disrupted.

More than a million children, most of them girls, missed out on school when education collapsed in the north after government staff fled in 2002 and school supplies became scarce, according to the U.N. Children's Fund, UNICEF.

By 2006, thousands were back in class and sitting exams.

Government forces, pro-government militia and rebel groups all recruited children, including Liberian refugees, to fight during the war. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers says many were sent to the frontline, and girls were used as sex slaves.

There is no way of pinning down exact numbers but in 2006, UNICEF put the numbers of child soldiers at 5,000, and warned that other children ran the risk of re-recruitment in the absence of lasting peace.

Although some of the children have been gradually re-integrated into their communities, continuing instability means that armed groups have been reluctant to dispense with their child armies.

The United Nations says sexual violence, including rape, against children is a major concern in the FN-controlled north and in western regions controlled by pro-government militias.