Cote d’Ivoire

Over 25% of the population in Côte D’Ivoire are registered as ‘foreigners,’ even though they have lived there for multiple generations. In 2014 the second generation born in the country made up 59% of those people identified as ‘foreigners.’ If both parents are foreigners the child is classified as a foreigner. The law lacks a definition of foreigner. Many migrant-descended people who were previously recognized as citizens had their nationality challenged when the government feared their electoral power. In the 2019 UPR, the UNHCR recommended that Côte d’Ivoire improve registration of birth among populations at risk of statelessness, improve facilitation of ID documents, and eliminate references to the generic term ‘foreigners’ in its Nationality Code.