DJCI
President appeals for urgent international action to save the
Ivory Coast
The genocide in Rwanda shocked the world a decade ago. “Never
again”, it was said, would such a tragedy be permitted.
Yet, such a disaster is in the making again in the Ivory
Coast. Over 17 million people in the Ivory Coast and some 40
million neighbors in the surrounding West African region are at
risk. As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has finally
acknowledged, the elections scheduled for October 30 cannot be
held on time. The international community must immediately take
robust action to prevent a massive, ethnically based, civil war
to follow.
For several
months now, D.J.CI and our Ivory Coast-based grass roots
movement CUP-CI, have been promoting a peace plan clamoring for
a greater degree of international community involvement in our
war-torn country as the only effective way to overcome the
current impasse and to set the stage to build sustainable peace
for the future. Once again, D.J.CI calls for the
international community, through the United Nations Security
Council in cooperation with the African Union, to drastically
increase its peacekeeping and peace building involvement in the
Ivory Coast. The time to act is now, before the current
tragedy escalates even further. Later action will be much more
costly.
We call for an
urgent increase in UN peace-keeping troops. We call for the
international community to support a transitional government
made up of technically competent Ivorians, not- implicated in
the current tragedy, to take charge after October 30. The transitional government should conduct intense
detoxifying reconciliation and civic education campaigns and
reconstruct the main institutions of the state, for a return of
the rule of law and as a prelude to democracy and economic
recovery. Only then, after two or three years, will elections be
meaningful. I
urgently call on the international community to heed the Rwanda
lesson of the past and to make the effort –now- to prevent a
similar tragedy from happening again in the Ivory Coast.
There is little time left!
For many, many,
months the UN Security Council and the African Union have been
trying to get Ivorian leaders to abide by their commitments to
resolve their differences in peace and allow the
elections for a new leadership to take place. But, the holding
of elections under present conditions would be no more than an
empty ritual. Much effort and significant funds have been
expended on this futile exercise so far. It is high time to
acknowledge that the Ivorian leaders have caused these efforts
to fail and that a radically new policy is required.
We
must acknowledge that the present political class (those in
power as well as the opposition) in the Ivory Coast has failed.
Their self-seeking promotion of division and ethnic violence has
brought the country to the top of a list of failed states.
Without close international involvement and support, there is no
way that we will be able to restore the peaceful and prosperous
life we once enjoyed. The alternative is genocide and total
destruction for our country, and a major catastrophe for the
West African region.
New
York 14 September 2005,
Modeste Seri,
President of
DJCI and CUP-CI.
E-mail: modestseri@aol.com
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