What Canadians Can Learn from the Ivory Coast Crisis

With tensions still exploding over the leadership dispute in the African country, we should have more appreciation for the United Nations – and for the sanctity of Canada's electoral process.

One of the benefits of working in international law and development is the number of friends and contacts you make in countries all over the world. The downside of this is that when something goes wrong in one of those countries, you often have a personal connection; this makes you acutely aware of the dangers faced by others beyond our borders. That’s what I’m finding and dealing with now as the current crisis in the Ivory Coast unfolds.

Over the Christmas holidays, I received a series of emails from a good friend who had just returned to his home country of the Ivory Coast, after several years abroad, just before the disputed presidential election. My friend described in disturbing detail how tense the situation has become, spoke of how his family has been targeted, and told of how dangerous it has now become for them to travel . It is a sobering thing –and prompts a horrible feeling of helplessness –to have people you know openly tell you goodbye, just in case the worst should come to pass.

To recap what’s been going on, a long-delayed presidential election was held in the Ivory Coast on Nov. 28, 2010. The leader of the Opposition, Alassane Ouattara, whose political support is based principally in the north of the country, apparently won the election, but the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, has since refused to surrender power.

More particularly, on Dec. 2, the Ivory Coast’s Independent Electoral Commission announced that Mr. Ouattara had captured 54.1 per cent of the decisive second round of the vote, to Mr. Gbagbo’s 45.9 per cent. International election monitors and observers consider the election to be essentially free and fair (another lesson from international work is that in many countries, “essentially” free and fair is about the best that can be hoped for).

The following day, however, Paul Yao N'dre, the president of the Ivory Coast’s Constitutional Council (essentially its Supreme Court), whom opposition leaders consider an ally of Mr. Gbagbo, declared that the incumbent president had won the election. After throwing out the results of half a million votes from the northern section of the country,(for unspecified irregularities), N’dre declared Gbagbo to have won the ballot 51.45 to 48.55 per cent.

Since then, both Mr. Ouattara and Mr. Gbagbo have declared themselves the rightful president and each has taken the oath of office, while tensions have exploded throughout the country. There have been widespread reports of hundreds of arrests, in addition to disappearances and massacres, of Opposition supporters. In December, more than 200 people were killed, and international peacekeepers have been blocked from visiting a mass gravesite. Since that time, on the orders of Mr. Gbagbo, the military has sealed the borders of the country, and all foreign news transmissions are now being blocked, with anti-western and anti-UN propaganda dominating state-controlled media broadcasts. This isn’t terribly surprising, given that the international community – in the form of the African Union, the UN, the EU, the Economic Community of West African States, Canada, the U.S., and France, among others – has recognized Ouattara as the election victor and rightful president of the country. Mr. Gbagbo meantime retains control over the Ivory Coast’s military and has denounced the international recognition of his rival as a foreign, colonialist plot. Finally, international pressure and sanctions are now being leveled against the leadership of Mr. Gbagbo’s regime.