Ivory Coast begins to issue national IDs
Move controversial -- blood has been spilled over who is a citizen
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) -- Authorities in Ivory Coast will begin a crucial and controversial program Thursday to issue identity documents in a country where disputes over who was entitled to citizenship helped fuel a civil war.
Hard-line supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo fear rebels who control the north and their opposition allies will use the program to claim citizenship for millions of immigrants working here -- something that could potentially secure millions of extra votes for Gbagbo's rivals in presidential elections slated by October.
Minister of Justice and Human Rights Mamadou Kone told an audience of judges Wednesday that the program to issue birth certificates to those without them is not a naturalization process.
For people lacking birth certificates, the program would distinguish who is a foreigner and who is Ivorian, and Ivorians would be able apply for national identity cards and register to vote.
To claim Ivorian citizenship, residents must prove that at least one of their parents was born in the country.
"There is a huge proportion of people living in Ivory Coast without any form of official documents," Kone said. "They exist physically, but they do not exist legally."
Rebels who control the mostly Muslim north say millions of northerners have been treated as foreigners in their own country and illegally denied identity documents.
The National Statistics Office estimates around 3.5 million people live in Ivory Coast without identity papers. Most of them grew up in rural villages and never received birth certificates.
The majority of those lacking papers either came to Ivory Coast as migrants from neighboring West African nations like Burkina Faso or Mali, or were born of families that did.
More than one-third of Ivory Coast's estimated 17 million inhabitants are migrants working on cocoa, coffee and cotton plantations.

The identification process of those over the age of 13 is expected to take two months and begins in the loyalist-controlled commercial capital, Abidjan, on Thursday.
Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, has been struggling to return to democratic rule and disarm warring factions since fighting erupted in September 2002, igniting months of civil war that ended with a peace deal that left the nation divided.
Elections originally due in October 2005 were delayed because little movement has been made on key issues, including the disarmament of warring factions and the question of identity.
Both sides have repeatedly failed to disarm, casting serious doubt over whether the country will be ready to hold the ballot by October.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited Ivory Coast last week to urge leaders to start both the identification process and disarmament in July.
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