A peace deal signed in March 2007 between the government and rebel forces raised the possibility of lasting peace in this war-torn West African nation after five years of violence and instability.

While there have been several unsuccessful attempts to form a power-sharing government since civil war erupted in 2002, this latest initiative has been met with tentative optimism.

Until the 1990s, Ivory Coast was a model of peace and prosperity as the world's largest cocoa producer and a major coffee exporter. Its fertile southwest was a magnet for farmers in neighbouring countries and the north of Ivory Coast.

But when cocoa prices dropped in the mid-1980s, the economy went into gradual decline, exposing tensions between people with foreign roots, northern Ivorians and those native to the south.

These tensions escalated into an all-out rebellion against the southern government in 2002, which split the country in half, separating the rebel-held north from the government-controlled south. French and U.N. soldiers patrolled a buffer zone between the two regions.

The 2007 agreement paved the way for the formation of a unity government including senior rebel figures and set the scene for fresh elections.

The United Nations and France have also started withdrawing peacekeeping troops from the buffer zone, which is to be completely dismantled under the accord. There are, however, no plans as yet to reduce the size of the 9,000-strong U.N. force in the country overall, although a review of its role has been launched.

Despite significant political progress, the conflict drove the country further into poverty, compounded by the suspension of bilateral aid programmes and the departure of foreign investors.

Rising numbers of women have been forced into sex work as a result of the economic collapse.

Life in rebel-held areas has been especially difficult since government staff - including doctors, nurses and teachers - fled the north in 2002.

Infrastructure such as sewage and water works, bridges and roads gradually collapsed. Essential supplies dried up and many government buildings, including health clinics, were looted or destroyed.
Ivory Coast was ruled by southern President Felix Houphouet-Boigny between 1960 when Ivory Coast gained independence from France until his death in 1993.

He encouraged people from Ivory Coast and overseas to move to the fertile southwest of the country to grow cocoa and coffee.

By the 1980s, immigrants from Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea made up a quarter of the population, according to International Crisis Group, and the economy was booming.

But a drop in global cocoa prices pushed the country into economic decline from the mid-1980s, and many urban white-collar workers were forced to return to farming, increasing competition for land.

The ensuing power struggle after Houphouet-Boigny's death in 1993 exposed deep divisions between the north and south along ethnic, political and religious lines. It culminated in a 1999 coup overthrowing Houphouet-Boigny's successor, Henri Konan Bedie.

"The coup sent an already deteriorating situation completely off the tracks. And since then there has been a gradual process of ethnic cleansing taking place," explained Mike McGovern, West Africa Project Director for the Belgian-based think tank International Crisis Group.

Immigrants and their descendants, as well as people from northern Ivory Coast, were targeted in sporadic massacres and gradually forced away from their cocoa plantations. These were then taken over by people claiming to be natives of the southwest.

The leader of the 1999 coup, General Robert Guei, introduced a new constitution barring people from running for president unless both parents were Ivorian. This was used to exclude his main rival, Alassane Ouattara, a former prime minister and a Muslim from the north whose mother was from Burkina Faso.

Despite these efforts, Guei lost the 2000 elections to the current president, Laurent Gbagbo, a Christian from the south and leader of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI).

The 2001 municipal elections marked a turning point in the political power struggle, as all political parties were allowed to stand.

Once Ouattara's Rally of the Republicans (RDR) party had won the largest number of communes in the vote, Gbagbo began to pursue a policy of reconciliation, culminating in a January 2002 summit at which Bedie, Guei, Gbagbo and Ouattara agreed to form a new government of national unity and set up a body to address questions over land ownership, especially acute in the southwest.

The new government was formed in August 2002. The controversial issue of Ouattara's nationality was resolved and he was given a nationality certificate.
An unsuccessful coup attempt in September 2002 put an early end to the unity government.

The coup failed but the accompanying violence escalated into a full-scale rebellion that split the country in two. Rebels seized the north of the country and the south remained under the control of Gbagbo's government. Guei was killed in the unrest.

Amid rumours that the coup was supported by foreign agents, thousands of migrant workers and refugees were targeted by security forces.

According to the United Nations, 20,000 people - mostly foreign workers - were displaced from Abidjan, the commercial capital.

Peace talks began before long, and by January 2003 the rivals had agreed to a French-brokered peace deal. It included forming another power-sharing government, setting up an independent electoral commission to organise elections, and changing the law to make it easier for people with foreign roots to become citizens and own land.

In July that year the parties formally declared an end to the war and agreed to a timetable for disarmament and reintegration, but distrust and suspicion abounded on both sides.

The main rebel group - New Forces (FN) - pulled out of the government in September 2003, accusing President Gbagbo of deliberately dragging his feet on implementing the peace agreement.

In March 2004, the government cracked down on a banned opposition rally in Abidjan, killing at least 120 civilians, according to the United Nations. Opposition parties withdrew from the government in protest.

The United Nations launched a peacekeeping operation in Ivory Coast the following month, taking command of regional troops in the country.

The situation reached a new crisis point when the government launched air strikes against rebels in November 2004, killing nine French peacekeepers. In response France destroyed a large part of the government air force, which led to anti-French riots in Abidjan and the evacuation of thousands of French residents.

Fearing a full-scale war that could destabilise the entire region, the U.N. Security Council swiftly imposed an arms embargo.

In December 2004, South African President Thabo Mbeki, under the auspices of the African Union, persuaded the government and rebels to agree a new timetable to implement the 2003 peace plan. The law was also changed to allow people with foreign parents to stand in presidential elections, meaning Ouattara could run.

Since then, the United Nations and African Union have brokered several peace deals to pave the way for elections. However rebel, government and opposition sides have squabbled over how to implement them and, although a tentative peace has held, elections have been postponed several times. The stickiest issues were disarming militia groups, naturalising residents with foreign origins, registering voters, and reuniting the country.

In the absence of elections, the United Nations extended President Gbagbo's term to allow him to stay in position, although with limited powers. The decision was based on recommendations by the African Union and West African leaders. And in 2005 mediators Mbeki and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed as interim prime minister Charles Konan Banny, a former governor of West Africa's central bank, to prepare the country for elections.

The president boycotted a U.N.-sponsored peace summit in September 2006 and said he was going to come up with his own peace plan. He reiterated that he would remain president until elections.

A breakthrough was reached in March 2007, when President Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro signed a peace deal which involved setting up a new transitional government with Soro as prime minister.

In October 2007 the U.N. Security Council renewed its embargoes on arms and diamond trading for another year, saying it was necessary to keep up the pressure. The U.N. Security Council banned diamond exports in 2005 to stop rebels using them to buy arms illicitly, although an October 2006 U.N. report found the ban was being breached and reported that diamonds from rebel-held areas were being sold on the international market.

Elections, scheduled for 30 November 2008 have been postponed until 2009.

Government troops and rebels both pulled back from their frontline positions in December 2007, and rebels began disarming in May 2008.

The primary challenge for humanitarian agencies since 2002 has been reaching people in need. The poor state of roads and bridges has made access difficult and security has been a major problem. It's preventing some 709,000 displaced people from returning home, especially in the west, according to the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR.

Most uprooted people - 90 percent - live in communities who've taken them in, but after years of economic crisis and insecurity many host families can no longer cope, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). It says thousands of displaced people live in deplorable conditions in shanty towns around the commercial capital Abidjan.

More than 20,000 Ivorians were still refugees in other countries in mid-2008, UNHCR said.

The United Nations says displaced people are particularly vulnerable to murder, rape and other forms of violence and sexual exploitation in the climate of lawlessness and impunity.

Pro-government militia groups have wrought havoc on the civilian population. Some began disarming in mid-2007, but they're still feared in western villages, where people blame them for murders, violence, stealing and attacks on cocoa-carrying trucks. The local population argues that disarming the militias is paramount, and fears they will disrupt elections if left unchecked.

The United Nations says the large number of illegal light weapons and small arms is partly to blame for the climate of violence and persistent state of insecurity across the country.

An amnesty declared in April 2007 for crimes committed by soldiers and civilians against the state has also been widely welcomed as a boost to the peace deal, but aid workers in the field report that there are still outbreaks of localised violence, often over land disputes.

Most government staff - including medical workers and teachers - fled the north during the 2002 clashes. Health, education, water and sewage services collapsed in the areas controlled by the New Forces rebel group, which covered about 60 percent of the country.
Most health centres are now open in the north and west of the country, and the two sides have been working to pick up the pieces at hospitals and clinics that were abandoned, looted or destroyed. Medical supplies are flowing again, after drying up during the conflict, and in 2005 the Ministry of Health organised a country-wide measles and polio vaccination programme.

MSF Holland says that in the west there are high levels of malaria, malnutrition and other diseases, and an "alarmingly high number" of sexually transmitted diseases, with the infection rate rising to 20 percent of adults attending its clinics.

The conflict made it virtually impossible to compile country-wide health statistics, but the Joint U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) says Ivory Coast has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in West Africa, with almost 4 per cent of adults living with the virus in 2007, according to its 2008 report.

The country's economic collapse, continued insecurity and a large influx of national and international soldiers mean that an increasing number of women are offering sex in exchange for food, protection or money.

Poor water supply is another major concern, with acute water shortages in the north and poor quality water in urban areas.

More than half the population does not have proper sewage systems, putting them at risk of diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, measles and poliomyelitis.
More than a million children, most of them girls, missed out on school when education collapsed in the north after government staff fled in 2002 and school supplies became scarce, according to the U.N. Children's Fund, UNICEF.

By 2006, thousands were back in class and sitting exams.

Government forces, pro-government militia and rebel groups all recruited children, including Liberian refugees, to fight during the war. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers says many were sent to the frontline, and girls have been used as sex slaves.

There's no way of pinning down exact numbers, but aid agency Save the Children estimates there were 8,000 child soldiers at the height of the conflict.

Although some of the children have been gradually re-integrated into their communities, continuing instability means that armed groups are reluctant to dispense with their child armies. In 2006, UNICEF put the numbers of child soldiers at 5,000, and warned that other children ran the risk of re-recruitment in the absence of lasting peace.