November 2007

Situation Update
The future of Côte d'Ivoire remains in a critical balance, with the peace process and prospects for presidential elections in the same fragile state they have been in since the signing of the ceasefire agreement in 2003. Immediately following the Ouagadougou accords in March, there was hope on both counts, however the slow implementation of the agreement risks loosing the essential momentum for national elections and lasting peace. President Gbagbo has announced his intention to organize transparent presidential elections by October 2008 at the latest, a reversal of his earlier stance that elections will be held by the end of 2007. The slow progress on the accords eventually prompted a meeting on September 3 in the Burkina Faso capital, between Gbagbo and Prime Minister Guillaume Soro, to reinvigorate the process. Out of this, the audiences foraines (mobile courts in which magistrates hear petitions for identification documents from people lacking birth certificates) were officially relaunched on September 25, 2007. The successful identification of voters is an important step in the reunification of the country and must be accompanied by the effective disarmament of armed forces and militia and the redeployment of the state administration to the North of the country in order to avoid the continuing risk of a return to violence.

Women's leadership and the path to peace in the sub-region
The road to reconciliation and eventual democratic elections is one that Côte d'Ivoire's neighbours, Sierra Leone and Liberia, have traversed recently, providing lessons for the region. In both contexts, nascent women's movements seized the opportunity presented by the end of violent conflict to play a new and important role in facilitating the peace process forward and taking political leadership roles in the post-conflict period.

In Sierra Leone, it was women, tired of years of continued war and the destruction of their families, who became the drivers of the movement to overthrow the military in 2002. Since the end of the war, women have organized, grown in political strength and now hold 16 parliamentary seats and three ministerial positions in the recently elected government, including the ministry of foreign affairs. Women also played key roles in the organization of the 2007 elections, not least of which was Christiana Thorpe, the president of the National Electoral Commission. Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf presents the most unprecedented example of the role of women in the women in driving the peace and election process in Liberia's post conflict situation. Her presidency was made possible due to the wider context of women's peace movement that organized during the worst years of the war and eventually provide an important base of support for democracy and the successful 2005 elections.

The descent into war knew no boarders for these three neighbours, the violence in one country destabilised the next. This October, SFCG used the lessons of women's leadership in Sierra Leone and Liberia as an example and catalyst for women's leadership on peace and in the elections in Côte d'Ivoire. SFCG's Women's leadership symposiums, two at the regional level and one at the national level, brought together leaders from across the spectrum of political, ethnic and identity groups in Côte d'Ivoire with women's leaders from Sierra Leone and Liberia to share experiences and build collaborative strategies toward women's leadership.

Guiglo and Bouake—Building regional solidarity for national engagement

"We have to open a debate to show other women that we have to listen to each other, we have to think Ivorian before we think ethnicity." - Participant in the symposium in Guiglo

Small group discussion in Bouake

SFCG organised two regional forums between October 15th to 19th in the western town of Guiglo, and the capital of the north, Bouake, for a total of 137 women's leaders, representatives from opposing political parties and diverse ethnic and religious groups of Côte d'Ivoire. These two regions have experienced the war in Côte d'Ivoire in very different ways and are dealing with very different contexts, however in both locations, what became apparent to the participants is the need for women to bridge their own divisions in order to lead a movement to heal the scars of Côte d'Ivoire as a nation.

In Guiglo, the men and women spoke frankly about the exclusion and conflict between the so called foreigners and the natives of the region that had resulted in so much blood shed and pain over recent years. The symposium provided a unique opportunity for representatives of all the regions diverse communities to discuss this history as an obstacle hindering women's participation in decision making at the local level. The war had divided communities throughout the region and women's leaders were not immune to these divisions. The groups represented at the symposium were almost all ethnically homogenous. By discussing their experiences during the war and participating in interactive theatre performances that depicted the challenges they faced, one particular source of unity began to crystallise among the participants. Each of them have faced similar experiences as women in a war and have similar concerns and hopes as the country emerges from this violence. As one participant summarised: 'At the level of the community there is no agreement, but women need to surpass their ideological and political differences, because it is they who suffered the most during the war.' There was recognition that the only way to end the suffering that all women and their families had endured; they had to find a way to begin working together.

When the symposium moved to Bouake, a similar theme quickly became apparent, especially as it was the first opportunity for the participants to meet each other since the crisis and attempt to ignore their political, religious and ethnic and affiliations, and externalize their suffering. The war has created real divisions between political and ethnic groups the region, and by some accounts, the conflict over identity and ethnicity is deeper in Bouake then any other region in Côte d'Ivoire. Participants mentioned that this was the first time that they had shaken hands with members of the opposing political party since the war began, despite inhabiting the same neighborhoods.

Given this fact, it was understandable that fear and distrust was present at the beginning of the symposium. However, as the participants began to share their experiences the fear and distrust among the women began to dissipate. One women, the leader of the NGO Avomca talked about how she had to flee Bouake by foot it a desperate attempt to protect the eight children in her charge. Another women talked about how her land and her livelihood had been taken away by soldiers during the war without any compensation. As in Guiglo, it was the women's shared experience during conflict that presented an opportunity for the divided group to come together. In both locations the participants developed action plans that sought to address division and discrimination between groups such as in the formation of multiethnic/identity women's rights groups.

The Testimonies of Women from Sierra Leone and Liberia
The two women from Liberia (Etweda Sugars Cooper and Regina Jarpee) and Sierra Leone (Kadiatu Sesay and Olaboni Coker) provided a galvanising presence at both the regional symposiums and later at the national symposium as they stood up to talk about their lives as women, their ordeals during war and the path they found to become prominent leaders in their respective countries. The women put their recent success in context: not long ago, prior to war in their countries, women were not organised and typically confined to traditional domestic roles. The war changed a lot of things for women though, as in Côte d'Ivoire, women suffered injustice and defilement of themselves and their loved ones, and by the end of the war many had become peace activists and politically active.

The guests presented the evolutions their movements have progressed through and strategies they have employed to increase women's leadership, fight for women's rights and fight violence against women. Of particular focus and interest to the participants was the ways in which the women were able to bridge their differences to form multiethnic organisations and movements, and how women were able to play an important role in the two country's most recent elections.

The National Symposium
One week after the symposium in Bouake, 67 leaders, including representatives of the regional symposiums as well as national women's leaders and men and women from all of Côte d'Ivoire's major political parties, representing the first time for many where these parties were together, sharing views in a respectful manner. In particular, the presence of women representatives of the Forces Nouvelle was a first for most of the other women, and this fact was consistently praised during the two day session as a crucial step toward breaking down the walls of mistrust and prejudice that had been built after so many years.

Participants gathered for the national symposium

The national symposium also helped bridge another divide, that between women from the interior and Abidjan. Women's leaders at the national level hold their own prejudices of women from more rural areas of Côte d'Ivoire as uneducated, while the women from Guiglo and Bouake saw the national women's leaders as imposing their views in national level decision making without consultation with women in the interior. Both views began to break down, as the representatives from the regional symposiums impressed the group with the sophisticated level of their problem analysis and their plans of action and found areas where they could work with together on a truly national plan of action.

By the end of the two day session, the women identified changes that they would like to make together and strategies to achieve the desired results. The participants agreed to the following changes:

• To improve the education of women and girls, a literacy campaign is required along with a plea for the adoption of the national law mandating girl's education.
• Fighting poverty is one of the objectives that women were assigned particular through the creation of Activities of Revenue Generation.
• At the same time, women can become a larger political force in Côte d'Ivoire. They want to see a high proportion of women in decision-making positions.

As a whole the symposium represented another key activity within the framework of SFCG's West Africa regional strategy, which holds women's leadership as a key priority. The strategy attempts to seize upon opportunities and events such as the election of Africa's first woman President in Liberia as an opportunity to challenge stereotypes and expand expectations of the role of women.