To the Economic Community of West African States and the Organization of African Unity: • Press for accountability for the human rights violations that have taken place in Côte d’Ivoire since October 2000. • Increase the level of attention given to the volatile human rights situation, and violence against foreigners and others distinguished by their religion or ethnicity in Côte d’Ivoire. • Make the human rights situation an agenda item at the yearly meeting of the OAU and during regular meetings with ECOWAS. • Request the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to follow its recent promotional visit to Côte d’Ivoire with a fact-finding mission into the election violence and ongoing human rights abuses and to make a written report of such an investigation available to the public, and provide funds for such an investigation. III. BACKGROUND For over three decades after its independence from France in 1960, Côte d’Ivoire was a country in which people of different religions and ethnic groups, including millions from neighboring West African countries coexisted in relative harmony. Potential religious and ethnic tension was largely smoothed over by Côte d’Ivoire’s first President, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, a Catholic, who ruled through his Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire (Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire, PDCI) until his death in 1993. During over three decades of HouphouëtBoigny’s rule, the economy of Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s leading producer of cocoa, was one of Africa’s strongest, and attracted immigrants from around the West African sub-region. Politically, it was considered a pillar of stability in a region plagued by wars, though challenges to the one-party rule of the PDCI increased as the economic situation worsened in the 1980s. After opposition parties were legalized in 1990, security forces were increasingly deployed against dissenters from PDCI rule. Houphouët-Boigny was succeeded by Henri Konan Bédié in 1993, the then PDCI speaker of the National Assembly. Bédié, who was elected president in l995, was also a Catholic from the same Akan ethnic group. During Bédié’s six-year rule, his government was plagued by allegations of corruption and bad governance, which resulted in the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the European Union all suspending economic aid in 1998.2 As President Bédié grew increasingly unpopular, he sought to eliminate potential political rivals. Unlike Houphouët-Boigny, who encouraged immigration and included Muslims in his government, Bédié fomented ethnic and religious mistrust through his own breed of nationalism which came to be known as “Ivorité” or “Ivorian-ness.” Prior to the 1995 presidential race Bédié stirred up xenophobia aimed at undermining the person he perceived to be his biggest potential political rival, Alassane Ouattara. Ouattara had been prime minister under Houphouët-Boigny and later headed the Rally of Republicans party (RDR), which draws heavily on support from the largely Muslim north. Bédié insisted Ouattara was not a native Ivorian but was instead from neighboring Burkina Faso. After Bédié questioned Ouattara’s nationality and ultimately barred his candidacy from the 1995 elections on the grounds that he was not entitled to Ivorian citizenship, Ouattara and the RDR withdrew from the race and Bédié was reelected. On December 24, 1999, soldiers disgruntled over low pay seized power from President Bédié and asked General Robert Guei, Bédié’s chief of staff, to lead the rebellion. After taking power, Guei formed a broad-based junta which included ministers from leading opposition parties, including the RDR and Laurent Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), and pledged to clean up corruption and rewrite the constitution. While the mostly bloodless coup was welcomed by many Ivorians who had grown weary of the increasing levels of corruption under Bédié’s regime, it shook Côte d’Ivoire’s reputation as a regional pillar of stability. By July 2000, it became clear that General Guei had political ambitions and that he, too, was ready to foment ethnic and religious differences in order to eliminate political rivals. In late July, a flawed constitutional 2 “Political Upheavals Expose Ivory Coast’s Economic Weaknesses,” AFP January 17, 2001 Human Rights Watch 10 August 2001, Vol. 13, No. 6(A)