6/27/08

Ivory Coast Human Rights Violations Prompt Concern From UN

By Pauline Bax

June 27 (Bloomberg) -- The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast said it continues to be ``worried'' about human rights violations in country's cocoa-rich west.

Armed robberies are recurrent, while land disputes between immigrant and local farmers remain ``a permanent cause of tension,'' Simon Munzu, chief of the UN mission's human rights department, said in an e-mailed statement from Abidjan today.

Munzu made his comments after visiting the region, which was the scene of the most-violent combat in the 2002-2003 civil war and caused tens of thousands of immigrant cocoa farmers to flee their plantations. Most have returned since the fighting ended, though tensions between local and immigrant farmers persist, said Munzu.

The West African country is the world's biggest cocoa producer, accounting for 39 percent of annual global output, according to the Web site of the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization. The UN has deployed about 8,000 peacekeepers across the country and plans to monitor presidential elections scheduled for Nov. 30.

``We will do everything to reassure the voters so that they can be fully involved in the process and vote,'' said Munzu of the balloting, according to the statement.






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