Côte d’Ivoire: top UN envoy to tour 1000 micro-projects for peace

Starting at a chicken coop and a pig farm outside the city of Bouaké, the top United Nations envoy to Côte d’Ivoire today started a five-city pilgrimage through the divided West African country to visit projects that aim to help ex-combatants and other at-risk youths re-enter civil society.

“The realization of these projects has been positive and I have great hopes they will make a difference,” Y. J. Choi, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for Côte d’Ivoire, said of the “1000 micro-projects for peace” programme backed by the UN Mission in the country, known as UNOCI, which Mr. Choi heads.

At the kick-off of his tour, Mr. Choi also inaugurated two classrooms constructed by UNOCI in the village of d’Olienou as part of an effort to provide support for communities that are welcoming ex-combatants in the country’s civil strife, which has divided it into a Government south and a rebel-dominated north since 2002.

Around 1,200 Ivorians have already benefited from the “1000 micro-projects for peace” programme, which was launched in August 2009 and financed by the UN’s Peacebuilding Fund, which is dedicated to helping post-conflict countries keep from sliding back into strife.