ARMED HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IN COTE D’ IVOIRE: ASSESSING THE RATIONALE OF FRANCE’S INTERVENTION

Abstract

Post-independent Africa is replete with grave incidences of wars, conflicts, and crises, which have sadly repeated across the length and breadth of the continent, have severely undermined the regional supranational institutions which almost always appear helpless and incapable of protecting the peace and security of Africans, inevitably paving the way for externalist interventions with inextricably ulterior motives. Armed intervention is supposed to submit to international convention in order to be accepted as being spurred by genuine humanitarian concern, not by geo-politics, economic, and strategic interests of the intervener. The paper adopts content analysis of literatures, and uses secondary sources. This paper assesses the role of France in the post-election debacle in Cote D’ Ivoire, which ended, not by the mechanisms of the AU, ECOWAS, or through the viewpoints of the competing African hegemons, but by the substantial diplomatic networks and sophisticated firepower of erstwhile colonial master, France. The paper’s concern is to investigate the reasons France could mediate in Cote D’ Ivoire, the rationale for this intervention and its merits in international politics.