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COTE D'IVOIRE: Efforts to contain deadly land disputes continue
09 Sep 2008 22:17:38 GMT
 Source: IRIN

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ABIDJAN, 9 September 2008 (IRIN) - Only days after deadly land conflicts, the Ivorian government is expected to launch a new law on 10 September that clarifies rural land ownership rights. Originally passed 10 years ago, it has now been amended to give rural landowners a certificate stating their land can be leased but not resold.

Experts worry recent deadly clashes over land and inter-ethnic tensions in eastern Cote d'Ivoire on 6 September will spread unrest as November's scheduled elections approach.

"We fear the worst could happen. Today even the slightest spark could turn into fire," warned Ivorian political scientist Gbalou Mathurin. "The scars of the 2002 conflict are far from being healed, and as forthcoming elections approach, other land disputes could throw oil on the fire."

The most recent conflict between the Lobi and Koulango ethnic groups broke out in Bondoukou in eastern Cote d'Ivoire, 400 km north-east of Abidjan on 6 September and left about ten dead and more than 20 wounded, said Ivorian military spokesman Hilaire Babri Gohourou.

History of land disputes

Land disputes have been at the crux of inter-ethnic conflict for more than a decade in Cote d'Ivoire, many of them pitting indigenous Ivorian against migrants from Burkina Faso and Mali. These tensions helped fuel the civil war that broke out in 2002 according to Mathurin.

Central to the 2002 rebel uprising was the anger of northerners, most of them descendants of immigrants from neighbouring countries, who complained they faced discrimination by the Ivorian authorities and challenges in obtaining citizenship papers.

The issuing of identity papers to all who can claim to be born on national soil was a precursor to the March 2007 peace accord between rebels and government soldiers, which brought an end to the conflict.

Désiré Leon Zalo, director of Cote d'Ivoire's rural land registry, estimates 70 percent of the 32 million hectares of land across the country has not yet been registered, and the ownership rights of up to half of it continue to drive disputes between indigenous Ivorian and immigrants.

At the end of August 2008 seven people were killed and about a dozen wounded in Gonzagueville, a district of the capital Abidjan, over a land conflict when indigenous residents accused others of illegally squatting.

"We went to Gonzagueville to demarcate our land. But when we got out of our boats we were jostled by the villagers who held sticks, machetes and stones, and were trying to prevent us from accessing it," said one of the wounded, Joseph Ossey, 45 years old, from his hospital bed where he lay with a crushed left leg and a still freshly-cut up face.

In a separate incident in June 2008 in Dabou, southern Cote d'Ivoire, clashes broke out between neighbouring villages over land ownership rights.

Taking action

The International Organization for Migration has been conducting negotiations between indigenous persons and displaced people of foreign descent in parts of the country to continue trying to clarify who has the right to own what.

The draft law on rural land rights expected to be launched on 10 September allows non-Ivorian heirs who acquired full ownership of the land before 1998 to keep their land titles.

Land registry director Zalo is hopeful. "[Land ownership] conflicts are occurring with increasing frequency…This law, if properly applied will drastically reduce or even halt the problem," he predicted.

aa/aj/pt

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