their customary rights.22 At the end of the period, all legal land transactions will ostensibly involve the transfer of land title registered in the cadastre. As to the second tension noted above, the 1998 land law incorporated the ideals of Ivoirité, stating that, for rural land, “only the government, public authorities, and Ivorian citizens are permitted to be landowners.”23 Anyone without Ivorian citizenship could not own land; their rights appear restricted to rental agreements or long-term leases, which can run for up to 99 years and be passed to heirs.24 Thus, many non-Ivorians who paid significant sums of money to acquire land prior to the 1998 law appear unable to transform their purchases into a land title. According to a 2009 report, “At best, [the nonIvorian] can expect to obtain a long-term lease with favorable conditions, but which still imposes the payment of rent for land that he considers his own.”25 Almost every pre1998 transaction occurred outside the written law—based on custom, not a transfer of land title—so it is difficult to say that it annulled “legal” sales. But the 1998 law certainly changed the type of property rights that some non-Ivorians believed, often reasonably, that they had acquired when purchasing and investing for years in parcels of land. Under the 1972 nationality code, citizenship comes primarily from jus sanguinis (right of blood) rather than jus soli (right of the soil). A child born in Côte d’Ivoire is only conferred Ivorian nationality if born to at least one Ivorian parent.26 Thus, as many as half the foreign migrants in Côte d’Ivoire were born and raised in the country, yet are not citizens.27 The 1998 law on rural land tenure further raised tensions between immigrants and natives in western Côte d’Ivoire, leading to several deadly clashes in 1999 in the center-west and south-west parts of the country.28 Many immigrants in western Côte d’Ivoire believed that 22 Ange Aboa, “Ivory Coast lawmakers pass critical land, nationality laws,” Reuters, August 23, 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/23/us-ivorycoast-laws-idUSBRE97M0Y120130823 (accessed September 19, 2013). Human Rights Watch has a copy of the draft law passed by the National Assembly, entitled Projet de loi relative au délai accordé pour la constatation des droits coutumiers sur les terres du domaine coutumier et portant modification de l’article 6 de la loi nº 98-750 du 23 décembre 1998 relative au domaine foncier rural, telle que modifiée par la loi nº 2005-412 du 14 août 2004. 23 Loi nº 98-750 du 23 décembre 1998 modifiée par la loi du 28 juillet 2004, art. 1. 24 IDMC and NRC, “Whose land is this?” October 2009, p. 17. 25 Ibid. 26 Loi nº 61-415 du 14 décembre 1961 portant Code de la Nationalité Ivoirienne, modifiée par la loi nº 72-852 du 21 décembre 1972, arts. 6-7. 27 IDMC and NRC, “Whose land is this?” October 2009, p. 18. 28 Alfred Babo, “The Crisis of Public Policies in Côte d’Ivoire: Land Law and the Nationality Trap in Tabou’s Rural Communities,” Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, vol. 83(1), February 2013, p. 107. “THAT LAND IS MY FAMILY’S WEALTH” 18