Tag Archives: ivory coast

Mark Pack

Ivory Coast: three reasons for optimism

By Mark Pack | Wed 13th April 2011 - 2:25 pm

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 – in the case of Yugoslavia – greater military force was deployed by the international community.

That lesson has strongly influenced many international interventions since – don’t intervene unless you are willing to do so with significant military firepower. The desire to minimise loss of lives …

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Mark Pack

UN forces open fire in Ivory Coast

By Mark Pack | Tue 5th April 2011 - 8:55 am

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.

The situation in the Ivory Coast is rather like that in the former Yugoslavia, which followed a similar cycle of political systems failing, rising violence with civilians often the victims and an international community for a long period only willing to take very limited steps …

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Mark Pack

“Everyone here has been targetting civilians to some extent” – BBC on Ivory Coast

By Mark Pack | Sun 3rd April 2011 - 9:50 pm

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 over the past few days.

They’re taking the bodies to a mass grave that they’re just digging now nearby.

The situation in the town remains very unstable. It’s held now by Alassane Ouattara’s forces – we’ve been talking to a lot of them. They deny any role in

…

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Mark Pack

Ivory Coast debated in Parliament; Simon Hughes asks question

By Mark Pack | Sat 2nd April 2011 - 8:56 am

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 Simon Hughes:

Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD): As well as encouraging Ministers to persist in their efforts to resolve the conflict, may I have an assurance that they are keeping in touch with the small but not insignificant community here in order

…

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Mark Pack

Nick Clegg lays down five principles of intervention – but doesn’t explain the Ivory Coast

By Mark Pack | Thu 31st March 2011 - 8:55 am

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 his speech, Clegg said that Libya different from Iraq because:

First, the Libyan action is unambiguously legal. Iraq was not.

Second, there is a clear humanitarian case for intervention in Libya. In Iraq the case rested solely on the danger posed by weapons of mass destruction, a

…

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Mark Pack

Government gives £16m to help with Ivory Coast refugee crisis

By Mark Pack | Wed 30th March 2011 - 8:57 am

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 Liberia, a country itself struggling to recover from its own violence. As The Guardian reported,

Last week the UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres,visited Liberia and warned that the influx of refugees threatened the country’s eight years of peace, following a civil war that left

…

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Mark Pack

How awful do events have to be in a country before they get attention?

By Mark Pack | Sun 27th March 2011 - 4:55 pm

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 having the UN High Commissioner for Refugees double its estimate in the last few days to a million people having fled (out of a population of 22 million)?

Or is having credible reports of sexual violence, summary execution and people being burnt alive?

Or is the UN saying 400 people …

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Mark Pack

Another 52 killed in the Ivory Coast

By Mark Pack | Fri 25th March 2011 - 12:55 pm

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 the end of yesterday, for example, Libya had got 54 mentions in Parliament so far this year, the Ivory Coast only six.

Yet this week has been another bloody one as defeated President Gbagbo refuses to leave office. The UN says 52 more people were murdered …

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Mark Pack

UN says attack on Ivory Coast civilians may have been a war crime

By Mark Pack | Mon 21st March 2011 - 10:25 am

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 to leave office after losing an election and who has refused to cooperate fully with the UN.

UN troops have already been deployed to the country but a political stalemate has ensued as the UN has not been willing to authorise further steps, such as the …

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