Photo Credit: Refugees International
10/25/2006

It is estimated that more than a quarter and possibly more than a third of Côte d’Ivoire’s 18 million inhabitants do not have effective nationality. Statelessness in Africa, as in many places throughout the world, has been caused by state succession, gaps in citizenship laws, and targeted discrimination. Côte d’Ivoire is presently not a signatory to the 1954 and 1961 UN conventions on stateless persons, which define a stateless person as someone who does not have the legal bond of nationality with any state.