Yearbook 2004
Ivory Coast. In February, the UN Security Council approved a peacekeeping force of over 6,000 to be sent to the Ivory Coast, where the political crisis continued despite peace agreements. The total population in Côte d’Ivoire is 26,378,285 people in 2020. The troop’s body would be made up of the approximately 3,000 West African soldiers already there. The UN force would cooperate with France’s approximately 4,000 soldiers who monitored the downtime line in the middle of the country.
In March, the former ruling party PDCI (Parti Democratique de la Côte d’Ivoire) left the unity government on the grounds that President Laurent Gbagbo sabotaged the peace work. An example of the discriminatory policy that also upset the outside world was the government’s decision to gradually exclude immigrants from the labor market. It violated the West African cooperation organization ECOWAS agreement on the free movement of labor in the region. When government soldiers shot at least 120 protesters, the rebels from the north, who called themselves the New Forces, also left and former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara’s party RDR (Rassemblement des republicans) government.
In May, the World Bank suspended lending to the Ivory Coast after the country slipped back with the repayments on previous loans.
After intensive mediation work by the UN and African Heads of State in July, the opposition parties and the New Forces joined the unity government. However, new wear and tear arose almost immediately after a promised vote in Parliament on constitutional amendments, softened citizenship rules and the creation of an independent electoral commission failed. This led to the New Forces refusing to be disarmed. Shortly thereafter, the New Forces left the government again and warned that Gbagbo was preparing for a new war. Just a few days later, government flights attacked the rebel brackets of Bouaké and Korhogo in the north.
Since nine French soldiers were killed and 22 wounded in the bombings, French flight knocked out most of Ivory Coast’s small air force. French forces then took control of much of the Ivory Coast’s economic center Abidjan and its international airport. Large anti-French demonstrations, fueled by the president’s circle, were erupted and French soldiers shot at least 20 people at one time. Several thousand Europeans, among them a small number of Swedes, were evacuated since the foreigners’ homes were looted and several women raped.
South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, who pledged to try to mediate, said in early December that all parties agreed on a series of confidence-building measures and to resume government cooperation. The re-assembled Parliament then passed laws that facilitate immigrants’ citizenship of Ivorian citizenship and which allows people with partial foreign incursions to run for president. The exclusion of the popular Alassane Ouattara, whose one parent came from Burkina Faso, from elections was one of the triggers for the Ivory Coast political crisis.
Population
Population area rather recent and limited due to the unfavorable environmental conditions, Ivory Coast was probably originally inhabited by pygmoid groups of hunters and gatherers. The subsequent immigration of Sudanese people dedicated to agriculture gave birth to the first stable nuclei. The current population is very heterogeneous, with several dozen different ethnic groups present. Kru-speaking peoples (Beté, Bakué, Dida), hunters and hoe farmers occupy the coastal forest area alongside groups with pygmoid characteristics (Gagu), a remnant of the most ancient ethnic substratum. A more advanced agriculture is practiced by the peoples of the Mande language (Dan, Guru, Diula), settled further inland, which border on the paleonegritic groups of the NE, partially Islamized (Senufo, Loro, Lobi). In the eastern regions there has been a consistent penetration of Akan peoples(the Agni are the most representative), from whose crossing with the indigenous populations the Baulè ethnic group was formed, the most numerous in the country; the Akan influence was strong even on the smallest kwa groups of the south-eastern lagoons (Abbé, Attié, Ari). Europeans are reduced to a few thousand: most of the French fled the country after the outbreak of the civil war (2002), resulting in the closure of commercial and financial activities and relative unemployment. For their part, the numerous immigrants (estimated at 4-5 million) who had flowed from Ghana and from the poorer Sahelian countries adjacent to the northern borders (Mali, Burkina Faso) partly returned, after the outbreak of the civil war, to the countries of origin, which have had difficulty in reabsorbing them. The loss of remittances from emigrants in Ivory Coast
- The demographic increase of Ivory Coast has been dizzying (about 5% per year, on average) from the mid-1970s to the mid-1970s, mainly due to the contribution of immigration; but in the five-year period 1999-2004 the population grew on average by 1.7% per year, less than the average annual balance of natural movement (2.1% in the same period; 2% in 2008). Based on the aggregate values of three indicators that the United Nations considers particularly expressive of the level of social and economic development (life expectancy at birth, literacy rate, per capita income with purchasing power parity dollars), Ivory Coast in 2003 was ranked 164th in the world ranking. The highest population densities are found in the coastal strip, where plantation crops are intense and more profitable, but above all in the urban agglomeration of Abidjan. Historical and cultural capital of the country, the city experienced an impressive increase in the number of residents after independence (3.6 million in 2003, while in 1934 it had only 34,000).
- The main languages used are the dioula, used for trade, the baulé, and, among the voltaic languages, the senufo. 38.7% of the population is of Islamic religion, widely practiced in the North, while in the South the Catholic religion prevails (20.8%); traditional local cults and beliefs are widespread.