1. Introduction 1.1. Nationality and statelessness in Côte d’Ivoire: what’s at stake? It is often asserted that questions of nationality and identity have been at the heart of the armed conflict that shook Côte d’Ivoire between 2002 and 2011. Yet less attention has been given to the flip-side of the nationality coin, namely to the phenomenon of statelessness, to its prevalence in Ivorian society, and to the stakes and challenges that statelessness presents to Côte d’Ivoire and the West African region in terms of political stability, human security, and the respect for human rights and the rule of law, all of which impact economic development and prosperity. Côte d’Ivoire is a country of immigration. Yet its nationality laws have resulted in the longterm exclusion of generations of migrants and their descendants from the national citizenry. Furthermore, the disconnect between what laws say and policies implemented in practice has been the defining feature of Côte d’Ivoire’s nationality system, as established in laws pertaining to nationality, civil status, and personal identification. These shifting sands of Côte d’Ivoire’s laws and practices have not only allowed, but have even forced, people through the cracks in the Ivorian nationality system. This has left some without established legal ties to any State in the form of a recognized nationality. UNHCR launched a Global Campaign to End Statelessness in 10 Years in November 2014 and adopted a Global Action Plan enumerating ten actions that States must take to this end. Côte d’Ivoire has the largest reported estimate of stateless persons or those of undetermined nationality in West Africa: 700,000.3 Addressing statelessness in Côte d’Ivoire will be critical to achieving the goals of the Campaign. Having acknowledged the presence of stateless persons in its territory, Côte d’Ivoire acceded to the two international statelessness conventions in 2013. It hosted the Ministerial Conference on Statelessness for the Member States of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in February 2015.4 It has also pledged to undertake a series of measures to reduce the number of stateless persons in its territory and prevent statelessness from arising in further cases, among other measures, in accordance with the Abidjan Declaration undersigned at the 2015 ECOWAS Ministerial Conference.5 Since Côte d’Ivoire’s crisis-recovery process began in 2007, the Ivorian government and UNHCR have embarked on a collaborative partnership to end statelessness in the country. To date, however, no comprehensive study on the Ivorian legal and policy framework that explains the causes and identifies the profiles of stateless persons or those at risk of statelessness has been undertaken. This report seeks to fill that gap. Several disclaimers are in order from the start. This report does not address the question of land rights, which alongside nationality is often cited as a root cause of the Ivorian conflict. There are a few pertinent points, however, to keep in mind. First, Houphouët-Boigny’s policy that “the land belongs to those who develop it,” was integral to his integrationist approach towards foreigners, but bred resentment among local communities. The 1998 land law therefore forbids non-Ivorian nationals from owning land.6 As such, the prospect of land-ownership creates a clear incentive to formally possess Ivorian nationality today in a way that it never did before. Furthermore, given scope limitations, this report does not address the consequences of statelessness on the lives of those concerned and it was not possible to conduct a comprehensive 3 This figure has been provided by the Ivorian Ministry of Justice and reported in UNHCR’s global statelessness statistics. UNHCR, Global Trends 2015, Table 7. An explanation and evaluation of this figure is provided in Section 5.8. 4 Materials from this conference are available at: http://unhcr.org/ecowas2015/. 5 Abidjan Declaration of Ministers of ECOWAS Member States on Eradication of Statelessness, 25 February 2015. 6 Loi No. 98-750 du 23 décembre 1998 relative au domaine foncier rural, Article 1. 5