Tag Archives: Côte d’Ivoire
31 October 2013
On 22 October, representatives of six countries located in the Congo Bassin, with timber industry representatives and civil society adopted the “Brazzaville Declaration” in which they agreed to jointly combat illegal timber trade in the Congo Basin.
The six states that adopted the Declaration are the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire and Gabon.
The Congo Basin, covering an area of 300 million hectares, harbours the world’s second largest rainforest after Amazonia. As a key resource for stabilizing the global climate, however, it is also a major supplier of illegal timber. The Brazzaville Declaration aims to implement measures that improve timber tracking, transparency and forest governance.
Source: UN News Centre | African countries consent to tackle illegal timber trade in Congo Basin – UN agency
11 April 2011
Cross-posted on Spreading the Jam
Ivory Coast is quickly becoming a political nightmare. Indeed, with the evidence of crimes being committed by Gbagbo forces, as well as by Ouattara’s supporters, the international community is faced with a dilemna: if it turns out that Ouattara is indeed condoning such actions, how can he be supported by the world community, if it is to be consistent with calls for removal of other leaders who have alledgedly been involved in such situations, such as Khadafi in Libya? The result of such consistency would however be a political vaccum that might create more chaos in the country.
Beyond this political dimension, the situation raises interesting issues of Shared Responsibility. In her previous post, Bérénice considered the Shared Responsibility of France and the UN in Ivory Coast. One issue that needs to be considered in addition to that is the question of the responsibility for the crimes being committed on the ground, by both sides, which is even more complex.
(more…)
10 April 2011
In follow-up to Security Council Resolution 1975, and in response to recent attacks against civilians and the United Nations mission, the international forces in Ivory Coast recently launched operations against the Gbagbo camp. The “unusually robust” reaction seems to have been triggered by the attacks by the armed forces loyal to Gbagbo directed against the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) Headquarters. The impartiality of a UN operation directly targeting Gbagbo has been quickly questioned, but it can easily be shown that “the fact that Gbagbo’s troops attacked the UN justifies the punishing response”. These events prompt two questions of international law. (more…)