Cote d’Ivoire

Descendants of migrant workers have been stateless in Côte D’Ivoire for generations. Most workers were brought from Burkina Faso, Mali and Ghana during the colonial era to work on coffee and cotton plantations. Interethnic clashes, including at hearings over who could obtain national identification as Ivoirian and who could stand for office, led to two civil wars. In 2024, the country was home to almost 1 million stateless people, most of whom are migrant-descended. In 2018, the National Assembly adopted legislation on the establishment of a special procedure for registering births, restoring identity and transcribing birth certificates. However, the ethnic discrimination which persists in the Nationality Code may keep the migrant-descended from accessing birth registration and/or proof of citizenship.