1.3. Côte d’Ivoire’s international obligations on nationality and statelessness Côte d’Ivoire acceded to the 1954 and 1961 Statelessness Conventions in 2013. Côte d’Ivoire is also a State party to the major international human rights treaties with provisions limiting State sovereignty over nationality, such as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Of primary importance, these treaties enshrine the right of all children to a nationality and to prompt birth registration, prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender and disability status, and guarantee women equal rights as men in their ability to transfer their nationality to their children and spouses. At the regional level, Côte d’Ivoire is party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, as well as the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, which also impose human rights obligations with respect to nationality matters. Furthermore, Côte d’Ivoire has been the subject of two decisions of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, which has called upon the State to amend its Constitution and nationality laws to eliminate discrimination, reduce statelessness, and to redress other human rights abuses perpetrated through its national legal frameworks.12 Côte d’Ivoire is also party to laws of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which create a regional regime guaranteeing the free movement of persons and the rights of residence and establishment, as well as the notion of ECOWAS community citizenship.13 2. Political and Migration Context of Côte d’Ivoire 2.1. Defining elements of Houphouët-Boigny’s immigration and integration policies Côte d’Ivoire had been a magnet for settlement of peoples from neighboring West African areas now constituting Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, Liberia, and Ghana since pre-colonial times.14 It became a French colony in 1893 and comprised a population of 1,959,360 people in 1901. Côte d’Ivoire possessed fertile and uncultivated agricultural land, but had low population density. The French therefore began to forcibly recruit laborers from neighboring colonies for resettlement in Côte d’Ivoire. The largest source of manual laborers was in Haute Volta (Upper Volta), now Burkina Faso, which became a French colony in 1919. In 1932, France annexed part of Haute Volta to the land mass of Côte d’Ivoire.15 This facilitated the mass forced recruitment of Burkinabè to work on major projects, like the rail line between Abidjan and Ouagadougou and ports in Côte d’Ivoire, as well as develop Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa and coffee plantation economy.16 Although the colonial system 12 Mouvement Ivoirien des Droits de l’Homme v. Côte d’Ivoire, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Communication No. 246/2002, 21-29 July 2009; and Open Society Justice Initiative v. Côte d’Ivoire, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Communication No. 318/2006, 25 February 2015. 13 For an overview of the ECOWAS laws related to nationality and statelessness, see Bronwen Manby, Nationality, Migration and Statelessness in West Africa, Dakar: UNHCR and IOM, 2015, pp. 81-87. 14 Kouadio Brou and Yves Charbit, La Politique Migratoire de la Côte d’Ivoire, Revue Européenne de Migrations Internationales, Vol. 10 No. 3, CERPAA CERPOD ORSTOM – Migrations africaines, 1994, pp. 33-59. 15 For the period 1932-1947, the land of Haute Volta was known as Haute Côte d’Ivoire, or Upper Côte d’Ivoire, with the land mass of modern-day Côte d’Ivoire known as Basse Côte d’Ivoire, or Lower Côte d’Ivoire. 16 One way the French promoted resettlement was to transplant recruits into “colonial” or “Mossi” villages in central Côte d’Ivoire that carried the names of their towns of origin in Haute Volta. Cissé Chikouna, Migration et Mise en Valeur de la Basse Côte d’Ivoire (1920-1960), Paris: Harmattan, 2013, pp. 120-123. 7