Cote d’Ivoire’s Statelessness Problem: Utilizing Multiple Tools to Support Implementation of Judgments Alpha Sesay and Amon Dongo In 2015, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) issued its decision in People v. Cote d’Ivoire. This case, which concerns statelessness and the right to citizenship for descendants of historic migrants in Cote d’Ivoire, is a good example of how strategic advocacy that is coordinated with local actors can ensure significant implementation of regional human rights decisions. Such advocacy establishes roles for a broad range of actors: the litigants, the state, the ACHPR, Cote d’Ivoire’s own national human rights commission and domestic civil society groups working together in coalition. As a result, the Commission’s decision has made a significant contribution towards the country’s efforts to address its statelessness problem. This can be attributed to several factors, including critical changes in the political environment in the country post-2010, the specificity of some of the relief ordered by the ACHPR, and the significant and robust advocacy undertaken by the litigants and a local civil society coalition to ensure state compliance. Beyond addressing Cote d’Ivoire’s statelessness problem, implementing this decision is also crucial to strengthening regional human rights bodies like the ACHPR. Brief Background After gaining its independence from colonial rule in 1960, Côte d'Ivoire pursued, under the leadership of then President Felix Houphouët-Boigny, a policy of broad ethnic tolerance and it welcomed the plantation-worker immigrants from neighboring countries. Following HouphouëtBoigny’s death in 1993, however, new citizenship policies were introduced by his successor, former President Henri Konan Bedie, based on the ill-defined and exclusionary concept of “Ivoirité.” Individuals from the north of Côte d'Ivoire, people known as “dioulas” -- a term applied to predominantly Muslim groups of various ethnicities -- were the ones primarily affected with their citizenship questioned or their right of access to citizenship obstructed. In addition to having their legal citizenship jeopardized, individuals suffered discrimination based on their names, their accents, or their physical appearance and manner of dress, if these somehow indicated “Northern origin.” According to the nationality code (of 1961, subsequently modified in 1972), even those who had previously been citizens became “foreigners” if they did not have one parent who was born in Côte d'Ivoire (or on the territory that became Côte d'Ivoire after independence). A law passed in 1998 (Loi 98-750 du 23/12/1998, relating to rural land) also set out to prohibit “foreigners” from owning land, voting, or running for public office. In light of the lack of any national-level remedy to this pervasive, structural discrimination, in 2006, the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) filed a case before the ACHPR on behalf of the affected groups in Cote d’Ivoire. The complaint argued that these Ivoirian policies and practices constituted discrimination, violated the right to citizenship and freedom of movement, and denied people the rights to family and development guaranteed in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Specifically, the Justice Initiative argued that the manner in which one acquired nationality in Côte d’Ivoire was so vague that it was impossible to apply in a consistent and non-discriminatory fashion and, if not corrected, would continue to permit wide-scale discrimination. 1