Ivory Coast

But the end of fighting has not meant the end of pain and loss for children and their families.

More than a million people, half of them children, were displaced. Tens of thousands are still homeless.

The violence has cut through a country where nearly half the population already lived in acute poverty and where abuse was rife.

We are responding to the humanitarian crisis and to the multiple problems of poverty and injustice that set children back.

• A million people, half of them children, fled their homes after fighting broke out in November 2010 over the contested election of Alassane Ouattara.
• Now the country is in critical condition, with children still separated from their parents, malnutrition rising, and shortages of clean water, health services and other essentials.
• We aim to raise £40 million to help 650,000 people in the Ivory Coast, including some still in refugee camps in Liberia.

The challenges

Five months of heavy fighting have resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe for the children of the Ivory Coast.

After elections on 28 November 2010, both Alassane Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo claimed victory, and the result was brutal fighting throughout much of the country.

Up to 3,000 people died, including some in mass killings. The UN is now investigating allegations of rape and sexual violence.

For children the situation has been terrifying and traumatising.

Half of the 1 million people forced to flee their homes, many to neighbouring Liberia, were children. Even now, many are still separated from their families; too few are in school; malnutrition is rising.

“I was at school when we heard the gunshots,” Daple Nunkahau Landy, 14, told us.

“I ran home and picked up my little sisters and brother. We got lost. I couldn’t find our parents.”

Before the outbreak of election violence, the Ivory Coast was already a highly militarized society, with children recruited as soldiers or “wives”.

It's stable economy, based on cocoa exports, was balanced by the highest rate of HIV in west Africa and poverty so extreme that families often sent their children out to work.

What we’ve achieved

• We’ve responded swiftly and effectively to the humanitarian crisis, working against the odds to supply healthcare for mothers giving birth in clinics where there were no drugs and supplying food and other essentials to people who had nothing. We flew in 40 tonnes of mosquito nets, plastic sheets, and other essentials to help displaced families, and provided help for hundreds of acutely malnourished children.
• We’ve set up spaces where children can play safely and return to a sense of normal life. Before the fighting, our Rewrite the Future campaign had achieved better access to quality education for more than 80,000 children, and got child rights in the national teachers’ curricula. Now we are setting up temporary schools.
• Our research shows that children consider sexual violence, including rape, incest and sexual abuse, to be a huge problem. The 40 child protection committees we’ve set up help identify children at risk of exploitation and give them practical help.
• Our groundbreaking report, No One to Turn to, exposed sexual exploitation by aid workers and peacekeepers. We’re now carrying out research into child trafficking, prostitution and domestic labour, so that we can help stop these abuses of power.

What’s urgent

Tens of thousands of families are still homeless and the entire country has suffered a blow so severe that it will take years to recover.

83,000 children in the northwest of the country are still not in school.

The rainy season is likely to increase the risk of disease for tens of thousands of people who remain displaced, or for those who are returning to find their homes and livelihoods destroyed.

Support our emergency appeal and help us reach 650,000 people

Read our Ivory Coast blog