Ivory Coast Requires $300 Million for Emergency Aid, UN Says
Ivory Coast requires $300 million for “priority humanitarian needs,” including aid to 800,000 people forced from their homes during four months of deadly post-election conflict, a United Nations official said.
“We need to act now,” Valerie Amos, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, said to a meeting of the Security Council after former President Laurent Gbagbo was captured and his security forces surrendered. “The humanitarian situation remains deeply troubling.”
Amos said a UN crisis assessment team has arrived in Ivory Coast and that agencies including the World Food Program, UN Children’s Fund and World Health Organization are sending supplies to the West African nation, the world’s largest cocoa producer.
Youssoufou Bamba, Ivory Coast’s ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council that the “health alert is high, with the risk of cholera and meningitis.”
Gbagbo had defied international opinion to cling to office while disputing results of a Nov. 28 election. While the UN, the African Union and the U.S. recognized Alassane Ouattara as the winner, Gbagbo refused to cede power, claiming voter fraud in the northern part of the country.
Ouattara will “very soon put together a broad-based unity government, inclusive, one which will integrate the competencies of all political forces,” Bamba said. The new government “will allow our country to enter into an era of peace, stability and prosperity,” he said.
Managing Own Affairs
The UN special representative for Ivory Coast, Choi Young- jin, said via video conference from Abidjan that the end of the conflict marked a “success story of a people managing their own affairs with international support.” He said that, unlike other current crises, this one had been resolved without “massive international intervention.”
Choi said Ouattara should act quickly to nominate people to head 17 of 30 departments that don’t have designated ministers, organize parliamentary elections and extend government authority to the northern part of the county, which had been held by rebels fighting Gbagbo’s government.
Cocoa for July delivery added $9, or 0.3 percent, to $3,065 a metric ton at 10:26 a.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York, after touching $3,095, the highest since April 4.
In London, cocoa futures for July delivery climbed 2 pounds, or 0.1 percent, to 1,939 pounds ($3,153) a ton on NYSE Liffe.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Varner at the United Nations at wvarner@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva in Washington at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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