dating ethnic//xxxdateonline.com/2008/03/17/news-nato-sends-more-troops-to-kosovo/”>Dating love online service
d as a model of stability, Ivory Coast has slipped into the kind of internal strife that has plagued many African countries.
An armed rebellion in 2002 split the nation in two. Despite numerous peace deals the main players in the conflict have struggled to find a lasting political solution.
OVERVIEW |
OVERVIEW FACTS LEADERS MEDIA |
For more than three decades after independence under the leadership of its first president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Ivory Coast was conspicuous for its religious and ethnic harmony and its ethnic dating site economy.
 |
AT-A-GLANCE
Security: Civil war in 2002 split the country between rebel-held north and government-controlled south; foreign troops patrolled a buffer zone
UN road map: Aims to re-unite country, disarm militias, restore state authority across the land, register voters and hold elections
Economy: Ivory Coast is world’s leading cocoa producer; UN sanctions include a ban on diamond exports as well as travel bans and asset freezes for some leaders
|
All this ended when the late Robert Guei led a coup which toppled Felix Houphouet-Boigny’s successor, Henri Bedie, in 1999.
Mr Bedie fled, but not before planting the seeds of ethnic discord by trying to stir up xenophobia against Muslim northerners, including his main rival, Alassane Ouattara.
This theme was also adopted by Mr Guei, who had Alassane Ouattara banned from the presidential election in 2000 because of his foreign parentage, and by the only serious contender allowed to run against Mr Guei, Laurent Gbagbo.
When Mr Gbagbo replaced Robert Guei after he was deposed in a popular uprising in 2000, violence replaced xenophobia. Scores of Mr Ouattara’s supporters were killed after their leader called for new elections.
In September 2002 a troop mutiny escalated into a full-scale rebellion, voicing the ongoing discontent of northern Muslims who felt they were being dating free online place
against in Ivorian politics. Thousands were killed in the conflict.
Although the fighting has stopped, Ivory Coast is tense and divided. French and UN peacekeepers patrol the buffer zone which separates the north, held by rebels known as the New Forces, and the government-controlled south.
Peace talks brokered by other African nations and France have, so far, failed to reunite the country. Under a 2003 peace deal the government is to disband loyalist militias and pass political reforms. In return, the New Forces are to lay down their weapons. But disarmament has yet to begin.
OVERVIEW FACTS LEADERS MEDIA
|
- Full name: The Republic of Ivory Coast
- Population: 17.1 million (UN, 2005)
- Capital: Yamoussoukro
- Largest city: Abidjan
- Area: 322,462 sq km (124,503 sq miles)
- Major languages: French, indigenous languages
- Major religions: Islam, Christianity, indigenous beliefs
- Life expectancy: 45 years (men), 47 years (women) (UN)
- Monetary unit: 1 CFA (Communaute Financiere Africaine) franc = 100 centimes
- Main exports: Cocoa, coffee, tropical woods, petroleum, cotton, bananas, pineapples, palm oil, fish
- GNI per capita: US $840 (World Bank, 2006)
- Internet domain: .ci
- International dialling code: +225
LEADERS |
OVERVIEW FACTS LEADERS MEDIA |
President: Laurent Gbagbo
Veteran politician Laurent Gbagbo, who was elected president in 2000 for a five-year mandate, was given a seventh successive year in power in November 2006 under a UN plan to find lasting peace.
President Laurent Gbagbo spent 30 years in opposition
|
The opposition and New Forces rebels said they did not want him back in office but a UN Security Council resolution, proposed by the African Union, allowed him to keep his job for a final year.
A historian by profession, Laurent Gbagbo is a former trade union activist who, since the 1980s, has taken a strongly nationalist stance, espousing the concept of pure Ivorian parentage.
He spent two years in prison in the early 1970s for “subversive” teaching and eight years in exile in France in the 1980s, before returning in 1988 to campaign for multi-party democracy.
Amid an uprising against his predecessor, he proclaimed himself president in October 2000, at the age of 55.
He derives much of his support from the mostly-Christian south and west.
Prime minister: Guillaume Soro
Rebel chief Guillaume Soro took office as part of a peace accord
|
The president appointed rebel leader Guillaume Soro in March 2007 weeks after the former arch rivals signed a power-sharing peace deal which handed positions in a transitional government to Mr Soro’s New Forces.
The deal envisaged that elections would be held within 10 months and foresaw the dismantling of the buffer zone between the rebel north and the south.
Mr Soro, a former student leader, came to the fore during the 2002 rebellion that led to the country’s division. He served in the reconciliation government of his predecessor, Charles Konan Banny.
MEDIA |
OVERVIEW FACTS LEADERS MEDIA |
Radio is Ivory Coast’s most-popular medium. There is a tier of low-power, non-commercial community radio stations, including some run by the Catholic Church.
There are no private terrestrial TV stations, although pay-TV services are provided by Canal Satellite Horizons.
State-run RTI has been caught up in Ivory Coast’s political strife
|
Rebels in the centre of the country use state radio and TV facilities in Bouake for their own broadcasts.
The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders says Ivory Coast is “one of Africa’s most dangerous countries for both local and foreign media”.
In 2004, amid attacks on rebels in the north, the government used the media under its control, particularly state broadcaster Radiodiffusion Television Ivoirienne (RTI), as a powerful tool in the ongoing crisis. In 2006 members of the Young Patriots militia - loyal to President Gbagbo - invaded RTI headquarters.
In 2007 UN peacekeepers decried “the growing number of inflammatory articles in the press” as well as an increasing number of violent attacks against publications.
The peacekeepers launched their own radio station, Onuci FM, in 2005. Initially available in Abidjan, the station extended its reach to cover rebel-held towns in the north.
The press
Fraternit Matin - state-owned daily
Notre Voie - daily, owned by ruling party
Le Patriote - opposition daily
Soir Info - private daily
Le Nouveau Reveil - private daily
Le Jour - private daily
24 Heures - private daily
Le Front - private daily
L’Inter - private daily
Television
Radiodiffusion Television Ivoirienne (RTI) - state-run, operates La Premiere and TV2
Radio
Radiodiffusion Television Ivoirienne (RTI) - state-run, operates La Chaine Nationale and Frequence 2
Nostalgie - private, Abidjan FM station
Africa No1 - relay of Gabon-based pan-African station, with some local programming
Radio Espoir - Abidjan Catholic station
Radio Paix Sanwi - Aboisso Catholic station
Onuci FM - run by UN peacekeepers
News agency
Agence Ivoirienne de Presse (AIP) - state-owned
