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Dakar/Brussels, 2 July 2009: To avoid jeopardising Côte d’Ivoire’s peace agreement, President Laurent Gbagbo and other Ivorian leaders must speed up implementation of its key provisions before the November election.

Côte d’Ivoire: What's Needed to End the Crisis,* the latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the fragile 2007 Ouagadougou Peace Agreement, which ended five years of fighting and territorial partition between the government and the rebel “Forces Nouvelles”. National and local authorities need to dramatically increase the tempo of electoral preparations, administrative reunification and disarmament of armed groups or the country could slide back into open conflict.

“Ivorian leaders must ensure that the country will vote in a peaceful environment”, says Rinaldo Depagne, Crisis Group Senior Analyst. “It has been suffering for the better part of the last decade and is on the edge of destroying its one hope for exiting the conflict situation”.

The 2007 peace deal has been mismanaged by all sides. The result is that Côte d’Ivoire remains a divided country. The construction of a national administration is incomplete. Although the military zone commanders in the north, the so-called “com’zones”, have relinquished their administrative power, they still oversee local independent security forces and have large militias at their disposal.

The disarmament process is at a standstill, with 9,000 former rebels yet to be integrated into reorganised police and armed forces, and up to 20,000 pro-government militias also still in place. Arms destruction has been negligible, limited to a small amount of weapons. The economic crisis aggravates the situation by putting legions of poor and idle young men at the disposal of the “com’zones” and government militias.

The important election registration process has moved too slowly. Two fundamental steps – identification and enrolment of voters – have been only partially completed. The procedures, underfunded and ill-conceived, are held hostage by politicians and government officials, a very dangerous scenario in a country that has recently used war as a means to resolve problems of national identity and power legitimisation.

The international community should start using its financial leverage to get the process back on track, pressing for disarmament and administrative reunification to resume. President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso, who brokered the peace agreement, needs to restore momentum to the facilitation effort. If they are not disbanded in time, the armed groups will have the power to intimidate the voters and manipulate the results. An effective national administration is an important prerequisite for any real progress towards a stable peace.

“Time is pressing for a relaunch of the Ouagadougou Peace Agreement. A slide back into open conflict must be avoided”, warns Daniela Kroslak, Deputy Director of Crisis Group’s Africa Program. “Côte d’Ivoire is today in a situation of neither war nor peace that is both worrying and unpredictable”.