Conflict in Ivory Coast of 2011 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Conflict in Ivory Coast of 2011 - Essay Example This research will begin with the statement that the Ivory Coast conflict resulted from grave cleavages grounded in religion, nationality, and ethnicity. In their attempt to strengthen their monopoly upon power, politicians get caught into these differences and along the way, paved way for the outbreak of the civil war. In December 2010, a dispute of election ignited violence among the followers of the President Laurent Gbagbo and supporters of Alassane Ouattara, the opposition leader. The electoral commission’s announcement of the results that declared Ouattara as a winner of the presidency’s second voting round became the cause of the dispute. Gbagbo rejected the results with his stronghold in the country’s south and accused that Outtara’s votes were inflated as a result of rigging in the northern Ivory Coast’s opposition home base. This threw the Ivory Coast into a political deadlock. Gbagbo and Ouattara both took oath as presidents of the countr y and both appointed their own cabinets, though Gbagbo had to face the pressure from the international community to step down as the international community had accepted only Ouattara as president. Many lives were lost, a lot of property got destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced during the course of the clashes between the supporters of the two presidents. As a result of the violence that had erupted, the country was divided into two parts; the south controlled by Gbagbo’s army and the north governed by Ouattara’s rebels.... The plantations of coffee and cocoa were run by the immigrant laborers brought first by the French colonialists into the country. To ensure their sustenance in the Ivory Coast after independence, Houphouet-Boigny enhanced the immigrant laborers’ right to live as well as work in the country. Although the policies of Houphouet-Boigny were quite progressive, yet they could not remove the inequalities between north and south. The disparity mainly arose because of the fact that most plantations of coffee and cocoa were located in the south whereas north only had a small share of plantations. Houphouet-Boigny attempted to address this issue by commencing the production of food on commercial scale in the north. Circumstances changed for the worse when the prices of coffee and cocoa dropped in the 1980s on the world markets (â€Å"Ivory Coast – Economy†). This certainly had unfavorable consequences for the economy of the Ivory Coast. Plummeting living standards and risin g petroleum prices spurred student riots and civil unrest. Vanishing job opportunities and declining income caused the young people to seek work in the informal sector but the immigrant workers had already occupied most of the best areas. This strengthened the negative feelings of the Ivorians toward the immigrants (Collier). The economic difficulties that resulted increased the differences between the immigrants and the indigenous Ivorians as well as between the southerners and the northerners. Since the northerner indigenous Ivorians had settled in the south in large numbers, conflicts between the northerners and the southerners ensued. Differences of ethnicity and religion