Forced evictions and house destructions in Côte d'Ivoire
Jan. 10, 2020, Abattoir neighborhood, Port-Bouet, Abidjan.
Despite positioning itself as one of the leading economies in West Africa, Cote d'Ivoire's urbanization plans do not always benefit the poorest populations. Over the past decade, the country has experienced an increase in number and frequency of house destructions.
BY ISABEL BONNET
The president of Côte d'Ivoire since 2010, Alassane Ouattara, appears to have kept his promise to modernise Abidjan, the country’s economic capital, by restoring stability and calm.
Since its independence from France in 1960, Côte d'Ivoire went through two civil wars. It has now become one of the leading exporters of cocoa, coffee and palm oil, and its economy has grown faster than most African nations.
Annual growth rate of real GDP per capita and per employed person (%)
In 2018, Cote d'Ivoire's total international support to infrastructure was five times as high as in 2011. Data from the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals found that the country received more than 271 million dollars from foreign investors, a 405.7% increase in Alassane Ouattara's first two presidential terms.
Though President Ouattara’s curriculum of new infrastructure seems to inspire dreams of a modern, emergent and growing economy, it is, realistically, only the wealthy who have benefited.
For the optimists, Alassane Ouattara will be remembered as the president who boosted the economy by building new infrastructures and for promoting international financial collaborations, mainly with China and France.
For some, destruction is all he represents.
Among the major achievements of his first two terms are the construction of a highway between Abidjan and Grand Bassam, a coastal town in the south-east, and a third bridge over the Ebrié Lagoon, which divides the capital in two. Ouattara has also started the construction of two more bridges, as well as a metro.
The construction of the highway has freed up space to build a path along a stretch of coastline that will be used for private sports facilities and a heliport – but it has also left 22,000 people homeless.
A quick look into the first 4.2 miles of the highway shows the transformation of an entire neighborhood between 2014 and 2017.
March 2019, view of the 14km-long Abidjan-Grand Bassam highway. There used to be a village along the littoral.
Sandrine spent months preparing for her final exams, the French Baccalaureate, under the roof of her small house in Vridi, one of Abidjan's precarious neighborhoods. It was 5 a.m. when she arrived at the test center that would determine her successful highschool graduation. Her phone rang: it was her mom. "Come back home," she told her. "They will tore our house down."
By the time she returned home to collect her belongings, her entire neighborhood had been razed to the ground.
Jan. 10, 2020, Abattoir neighborhood, Port-Bouet, Abidjan.
"We still don’t know why we were evicted.”
–Adama Dramé, a member of the Collective of the Evicted of the New Abattoir District.
Their neighborhood was demolished without prior notice.
The main targets are local markets and marginalized neighborhoods. Though some recent house destructions were done to build new projects such as a metro and two bridges, the reason for demolishing most households remains unknown.
This would have made the news, but it was not extraordinary. Abidjan has about 5 million inhabitants, but in 2019, the Minister of Construction, Housing and Urbanization announced that 1,2 million houses in 132 “precarious districts” would be demolished.
One fifth of the population has lost their homes.
I spent the past years tracking house destructions in Abidjan using satellite imagery on Google Earth and combining this research with all available information online: Youtube videos, tweets, Facebook posts and government websites.
Just before the highway, opposite the coastline, is one of Abidjan’s largest suburbs: Adjouffou. About 25,000 residents live in this constantly growing village, right next to the international airport.
In January 2020, a 14-year-old boy was found dead in the undercarriage of an Air France jet travelling from Abidjan to Paris. For the government, there was only one explanation: the young man had accessed the runway by crossing a common wall between the air strip and Adjouffou. Authorities had all the excuses they needed to demolish the village, under the pretence of stopping people from illegally accessing the airport. Residents were given a 24-hour notice to leave the neighbourhood.
The verdict wasn’t a surprise; the government had been waiting for a reason to demolish Adjouffou for some time. In 2017, Ivorian authorities announced their intention to expand the airport, starting in 2020.
In 2019, Amnesty International raised concerns about the lack of consultation prior to evictions. “They also fail to provide people with information about the reason for an eviction, adequate notice or legal remedies, or adequate housing options for resettlement,” reads their report.
According to the UNHRW, “forced evictions are a gross violation of human rights, in particular the right to adequate housing” (Resolution 1993/77). Because the guidelines on forced evictions remain the only written rules and regulations, there is no national policy preventing these governments from violating international human law during forced evictions.
Jan. 27, 2020, Aéro Canal, Port-Bouet, Abidjan.
Parts of this research and paragraphs were published in VICE in 2020.