Archive for ivory coast
Ivory Coast: three reasons for optimism
In both Rwanda and then, initially, in the former Yugoslavia, international peacekeeping troops were dispatched and then largely stood by as widespread, murderous violence took place around them. A mixture of weak mandates, limited military deployments and prioritising the safety of peacekeepers over those they were meant to be protecting meant little was achieved until [...]
UN forces open fire in Ivory Coast
As the situation in violence-ravaged Ivory Coast deteriorates even further, there has been a belated stepping up of the UN’s role in the country in an effort to prevent civilian casualties. UN and French helicopters yesterday opened fire on military camps loyal to defeated President Gbagbo, who refused to leave office after November’s Presidential elections. [...]
“Everyone here has been targetting civilians to some extent” – BBC on Ivory Coast
The BBC’s Andrew Harding reports from Ivory Coast: I’m walking down the street here in Duekoue and there are bodies all around me. They’re being brought out by Red Cross workers, pulling them out of the bushes, they’re being wrapped in plastic. I’ve seen 30-40 already, and that’s just a fraction of what they’ve collected [...]
Ivory Coast debated in Parliament; Simon Hughes asks question
Having commented adversely previously about how little attention has been given to the spiralling humanitarian disaster in Ivory Coast by Parliament, it’s only fair to mention that it was the subject of an urgent question in Parliament this week and the previous lack of Parliamentary interest in the issue from Liberal Democrats was broken by [...]
Nick Clegg lays down five principles of intervention – but doesn’t explain the Ivory Coast
In a major foreign policy speech in Mexico this week, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg laid out five reasons why intervention in Libya was the right course to take and different from Iraq. However, applying those five reasons to the Ivory Coast raises the question why it is being treated so differently from Libya. In [...]
Government gives £16m to help with Ivory Coast refugee crisis
Some good news from the government on the unfolding international crisis that almost no-one in Britain is interested in, namely the Ivory Coast. The Department for International Development (DfiD) is giving £16m in emergency aid to help deal with the large numbers of people fleeing the violence. Many of them are crossing the border to [...]
How awful do events have to be in a country before they get attention?
Here’s a simple question: how bad do events have to get in a country before it appears on the mainstream political agenda in this country? Is having the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimate that up to half a million people have had to flee their homes as a result of violence enough? Or is [...]
Another 52 killed in the Ivory Coast
With a depressing predictability, my post at the start of the week about how the Ivory Coast’s violent political tragedy is being largely ignored has been one of the least well read posts on The Voice during this week. But The Voice’s readers are pretty typical of the wider world in this respect at least. Until [...]
UN says attack on Ivory Coast civilians may have been a war crime
So far, events in the Ivory Coast have received far less attention than those in Libya, even prior to the military intervention in the latter. Ivory Coast may not have the proximity to Europe of Libya, or a ruler to match the eye-catching nature of Colonel Gadaffi, but it has a President who has refused [...]
