From Stability to Insurgency: The Root and Proximate Causes of the September 2002 Civil War in Cote d'Ivoire

This dissertation was an analysis of the root and proximate causes of the September 2002 civil war in Côte d’Ivoire. The central question of this study was: Why did Côte d’Ivoire, which was relatively stable under President Houphouët-Boigny, suddenly begin to experience political violence in the 1990s and an explosion in 2002? Côte d’Ivoire was an interesting case because it was stable for a long period of time, apparently making it an infertile ground for conflict. It was also interesting for comparative purposes because of the fact that several states in West Africa (for instance, Benin, Togo, and Ghana) have experienced military coups but not have civil wars. Finally, this case was an opportunity to revisit the debate on the causes of civil wars in the African context. Chapter one has outlined the entire dissertation project and contextualized the analysis that follows in the subsequent chapters. Chapter two has reviewed the literature on civil wars in general, identified the different types of civil wars, and the type the Ivoiran war is. Chapter three has examined the domestic and international political economy as a source of the civil violence in Côte d’Ivoire. Chapter four has examined the role of ethnicity and region as identities of the war, while chapter five has analyzed the role of the foreign relations in the civil war, as well as the regional political context. Chapter six has distinguished between the root and proximate causes of the Ivoirian civil war, made judgments about the relative weight of the various causes, and the extent to which the weight of the causes can be measured. The study found that the “Ivoirité” was the most important trigger of the civil war in Côte d’Ivoire. The overall conclusion of my dissertation was that the September 2002 crisis in that country was a political crisis which occured in the context of a political reform. It first started with succession problems in 1993 followed by the controversial elections in 1995 and 2000. Later, this electoral politics spread beyond electoral issues, namely citizenship matters.

Prueba de hechos/incidentes de los elementos contextuales en el marco de las confirmaciones de cargos por delitos de lesa humanidad ante la corte penal internacional

Con ocasión de la decisión de aplazamiento de la confirmación de cargos de 3 de junio de 2013 en el caso contra Laurent Gbagbo (ex presidente de Costa de Marfil), se analiza en el presente trabajo si, en el marco de una confirmación de cargos ante la CPI, los hechos que se utilizan para mostrar la existencia de los elementos contextuales de los delitos imputados han de ser probados con el mismo tipo de evidencia que aquella utilizada para probar los hechos relativos a los elementos específicos (entendiendo, en todo caso, que el estándar de prueba aplicable a ambos conjuntos de hechos es el de “prueba suficiente de que existen motivos fundados para creer” previsto en el art. 61 (7) del Estatuto de Roma). Para ello, se analizaron las decisiones de confirmación de cargos proferidas por la CPI en los casos en contra de Germain Katanga, Jean Pierre Bemba, William Ruto y Uhuru Kenyatta, en lo relativo a los crímenes de lesa humanidad.

Le thème du mensonge dans Le Petit Canard de Jacques Laurent’

ADEFFI annual conference
Trinity College Dublin
October 2007

Finite domination and Novikov rings: Laurent polynomial rings in two variables

Let C be a bounded cochain complex of finitely generatedfree modules over the Laurent polynomial ring L = R[x, x−1, y, y−1].The complex C is called R-finitely dominated if it is homotopy equivalentover R to a bounded complex of finitely generated projective Rmodules.Our main result characterises R-finitely dominated complexesin terms of Novikov cohomology: C is R-finitely dominated if andonly if eight complexes derived from C are acyclic; these complexes areC ⊗L R[[x, y]][(xy)−1] and C ⊗L R[x, x−1][[y]][y−1], and their variants obtainedby swapping x and y, and replacing either indeterminate by its inverse.

Finite domination and Novikov rings. Laurent polynomial rings in several variables

We present a homological characterisation of those chain complexes of modules over a Laurent polynomial ring in several indeterminates which are finitely dominated over the ground ring (that is, are a retract up to homotopy of a bounded complex of finitely generated free modules). The main tools, which we develop in the paper, are a non-standard totalisation construction for multi-complexes based on truncated products, and a high-dimensional mapping torus construction employing a theory of cubical diagrams that commute up to specified coherent homotopies.

Laurent [Marcel], Lapierre, Jouhaux (fils) [responsables syndicaux de la CGT] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 59274