Côte d’Ivoire: UN legal team assesses prisons and judiciary

United Nations legal experts are on a 10-day visit to Côte d'Ivoire to study the West African country’s implementation of national laws and its prison administration as well as the judiciary’s interaction with other sectors of society.

Yesterday, the two experts from the UN Department Operations Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), Agneta Johnson and Gwendolyn Chellam, went to the western region to discuss the redeployment of judicial and prison authorities across the country following years of tensions in the wake of a political and military crisis.

The UN Mission in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) says the visit will enable the UN and the international community, which has contributed to the reorganization of the judicial and prison sectors, to assess the progress achieved and the challenges remaining to be addressed.

UNOCI was set up in 2004 to help ensure a ceasefire and pave the way for permanent peace and democratic elections after civil war split the country into a Government-ruled south and a rebel-controlled north seven years ago. Reauthorized repeatedly since then, most recently until 31 January 2010, it currently comprises nearly 8,400 uniformed personnel, as well as 407 international civilian staff.

Earlier this month, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative Young-Jin Choi warned that technical difficulties might yet again delay the country’s long-awaited presidential elections, which were to have been held as far back as 2005 and are now scheduled for 29 November.