33 Countries of Origin’ Profiles

Ivory Coast related to the Northern Mandé 6 . In the recent past the country has hosted a large number of refugees from neighbouring countries, many of whom are stateless arriving partly for political reasons and partly as refugees fleeing from different civil wars 7 . POLITICAL SITUATION: . After its independence in 1960, the development of cocoa production (particularly in the Abidjan area) attracted numerous foreign investments and Cote d'Ivoire was one of the most prosperous states in West Africa, with two and a half decades of peace and stability under the guidance of Boigny. The global economic downturn in the early 1980s caused the collapse of the economy affecting the stability of the government, which in 1990 had to face the first protests of the population to which Boigny responded by granting some political freedoms. The economic problems also exacerbated tensions between locals and foreign migrants, as well as between internal migrants from the north and locals in the southern regions. After the death of Boigny, his successor Henri Konan Bédié, largely stopped the efforts to balance different ethno- regional interests and instead started favoring people from his own ethnic group, promoting the rise of the ideology of ivoirité , a conception of citizenship based on autochthonous origins 8 , so in 1999 he was overthrown by a military coup led by General Robert Guei. The new elections in 2000 were characterized by attempts at fraud by Guei and the exclusion of Ouattara, the main opposition candidate, excluded because of mixed blood (one of his parents was foreigner). The decision unleashed the rage of the Muslims of the north, who clashed with the security force, bringing Gbagbo to power. In September 2002, part of the army and Ivoirian dissidents tried to overthrow the regime, the coup turned into a real civil war that split the country in 3: the northern controlled by the rebels (Forces Nouvelles), the south under the control of the government and peacekeeping forces a buffer zone between the two. In March 2007, GBagbo and the leader of FN signed an agreement. In November 2010, Ouattara won the presidential election, but Gbagbo refused to hand over power, resulting in a five-month resumption of violent conflict. In April 2011, after widespread fighting, Gbagbo was formally forced from office by armed Ouattara supporters with the help of UN and French forces. 9 The UN peacekeeping mission departed in June 2017. Ouattara is focused on rebuilding the country's economy and infrastructure while Gbagbo is in The Hague on trial for crimes against humanity . The civil war of 2002 to 2007 pushed thousands of foreign migrants, Liberian refugees, and Ivoirians to flee to Liberia or other regional countries and a lot of internally displaced; to the other hand, more than 3,000 civilians were killed in clashes between forces armies of Gbagbo and the pro-Ouattara rebel militias, with 1 million displaced persons and 500,000 war refugees 10 . CULTURAL TRADITIONS Côte d’Ivoire is characterised by a serious social and economical divide between north and south. Electricity access reached 88% of the population in urban areas, while in rural areas is still limited to 29%, although increasing 11 . Most people living in villages, stay in temporary structures, they have simple life, fetching their own water and firewood. Their houses 6 http://countrystudies.us/ivory-coast/24.htm 7 h ttp://acs-italia.org/PDF/AFRICA/COSTA%20D%E2%80%99AVORIO.pdf 8 https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/22514/Regional0imbal0t0African0countries.pdf?se quence=1&isAllowed=y 9 http://acs-italia.org/PDF/AFRICA/COSTA%20D%E2%80%99AVORIO.pdf 10 https ://ww w.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/iv.html 11 https ://ww w.se4all-africa.org/se4all-in-africa/country-data/cote-d%E2%80%99ivoire/