Côte d'Ivoire human rights report to UN Security Council due Friday, UN says

The acting United Nations human rights chief will brief the Security Council Friday on a report into the demonstrations that took place in March in Côte d'Ivoire, which left dozens of people dead.

The briefing by Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights Bertrand Ramcharan will be on an independent inquiry into the human rights situation in the West African country, José Luis Díaz, spokesman for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told journalists in Geneva.

Last week Côte d'Ivoire's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Philippe Djangone-Bi, held a news conference to protest the leaking of the report to certain French media and said it would demand an inquiry into the release of the report before the Government had received it in French.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the number of deaths during the demonstrations on 25 and 26 March, which were banned by the Government, ranged from a government report of 37, including two policemen, to an opposition estimate of 300 in the commercial capital, Abidjan. One person was killed and 25 wounded in the political capital, Yamoussoukro.

Early last month Mr. Ramcharan appointed as investigators Vera Duarte, the Coordinator of the National Committee of Human Rights and a former Justice of the Supreme Court of Cape Verde, Eugène Nindorera, the former Burundian Minister for Human Rights, and Franca Sciuto of Italy, the Chairperson of the Rainforest Foundation, former Chairperson of Amnesty International's International Executive Committee and a member of the 2001 Commission of Inquiry on Côte d'Ivoire.