Foreigners and Foundlings – Statelessness in Côte d’Ivoire

In this post I examine the issue of statelessness in Côte d’Ivoire. I argue that the country needs to move on from the discriminatory treatment of stateless and undocumented people within its borders, especially children. Côte d’Ivoire also needs to take steps to fulfil the commitments it has made to eliminate statelessness under international law.

 

Forced and voluntary migration to Côte d’Ivoire

As is the fate of a number of countries on the African continent, the issue of statelessness in Côte d’Ivoire has its roots in colonisation and the detrimental behaviours and practices of the colonists.  During the colonial period, French authorities forcibly imported many tens of thousands of labourers from elsewhere in French West Africa. They were there to work on plantations and infrastructure projects in Côte d’Ivoire. According to the Refworld Report on Statelessness and Nationality in Côte d’Ivoire (CDI), ¹ the main source of emigration to CDI is from nearby countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea. Large numbers of migrant workers also came of their own initiative both before and after independence.

The Ivorian nationality code adopted at independence, in 1958, attributed nationality at birth to a child born in Côte d’Ivoire, unless both parents were “foreigners” ². In other words, Ivorian nationality law gives primacy to descent (jus sanguinis) and not the place of birth (jus solis).  The law was not completely inflexible. It allowed children born in CDI of foreign parents to apply for Ivorian nationality at majority. However, only a handful of people benefited from this provision before it was repealed in 1972.  Despite the limited uptake of citizenship by children of a foreign parent or parents, the problem was minimised for many years by independence leader and President Félix Houphouët Boigny. The president maintained a liberal regime for the treatment of foreigners. This included allowing people of West African origin living in CDI the right to vote and to utilize land just as Ivorian nationals could.

 

Discriminatory practices

The landscape changed, however, in the mid-1990s, when economic recession hit and Houphouët Boigny died. The government adopted a series of measures to deny nationality documents to those who were perceived to be of foreign origin. The discriminatory policies that followed, including evictions, foreigners losing the right to own land, job dismissals, and the stripping of documents and rights associated with nationality from hundreds of thousands of people is said to have contributed to the electoral crisis of 2000 and the civil war that broke out in 2002.

 

Extent of the statelessness in Côte d’Ivoire

The Refworld report provides an interesting statistic that highlights the level of statelessness in Côte d’Ivoire as a result of its long history of migration: 24% of the population of about 20million, so around 5.5million people, self-identifies as ‘foreign’ and does not have Ivorian nationality. Half of those who identify as ‘foreign’ were in fact born in CDI.

Since the 1990s, the impact for people without citizenship in CID is far reaching. Without the legal status as a national of CDI or the identification documents to prove it, people living in CDI do not have access to middle or high school, nor can they travel without restriction within the country, open a bank account, own land, or apply for a formal job.  ³

 

A new dawn?

Things appeared to take a turn for the better in 2013, at least for some of those without a legal identity.  The new government adopted a law that provided access to special temporary procedures for individuals to acquire Ivorian nationality. However, it applied only to those who had been eligible for Ivorian citizenship before 1973. Some 120,000 people applied and by 2016, it seems that some 6,400, not all of whom were stateless, had received their documents.

Aside from this temporary solution, permanent reforms to the nationality law are still lacking. This is despite the Ivorian government’s intent to tackle the issue of stateless by acceding to the two statelessness eradication conventions in 2013. ⁴ The 1961 Convention establishes measures for States to undertake to ensure that statelessness does not arise at birth for children born in its territory, to its nationals abroad, upon loss or deprivation of a country’s nationality, or in the context of State succession. The UNHCR in its Global Focus series notes that to date no procedures to amend the law to deal with children born to ‘foreigners’ have been adopted since CDI’s accession in 2013 to the 1961 Convention. ⁵

 

Next steps towards compliance with international obligations

The government will need to consider reforms to nationality laws, birth registration and how citizens are identified.  Without those reforms, nothing will change for those that remain, or are born, undocumented or stateless. For example, CDI has obligations under Article 1 of the 1961 Convention which requires states to grant nationality to children born in their territory, if they would otherwise be stateless. In light of this obligation, one legal reform that urgently needs to happen is a re-introduction of a provision in the country’s nationality law that gives the right to citizenship for those children who have been abandoned and are of unknown parents, such as existed until 1972 ⁶.  Just this reform could make a difference to some 300,000 people affected by the lack of provisions dealing with so called ‘foundlings’.  ⁷