 Hello and welcome to the U.S. Institute of Peace for a conversation with the President of the National Assembly of Côte d'Ivoire, his Honorable President Adama Mitogu. I am Joseph Sani. I'm the Vice President of the U.S. Institute of Peace and I lead the Africa Center. For those unfamiliar with the Institute, the U.S. Institute of Peace is an independent nonpartisan organization based in Washington, D.C. and founded by Congress in 1984 and exclusively funded by Congress, the U.S. Congress and other U.S. government agencies. The Institute achieves its mission through training, research and analysis and support for peace processes and those working on the front lines of conflict around the world. As we all know, parliamentarians play a vital role in the success of democracy and particularly in West Africa. Today's conversation will be focused around an important role parliamentarians play in the peace-building process and what specific opportunities lie ahead for partnership with the international community and countries such as Côte d'Ivoire to continue to build peace in the sub-region of West Africa. President Adama Mitogu was elected first as Vice President of the National Assembly of Côte d'Ivoire on April 14, 2021 and then was elected as the President of the National Assembly by almost the entirety of the House, both the opposition party and the party in power in June 2022. He was also among other positions, Minister of African Integration between 2011 and 2012. Côte d'Ivoire has achieved significant economic progress since the violent political crisis in 2010 and 2011, with the country being seen as a driver of growth in the region. This stands in part to the country's parliamentarians who have made significant contributions at the national level in the last decade. With Côte d'Ivoire now facing a surge in violence extremist groups infiltrating its own northern borders and those of the coastal West Africa region broadly, parliamentarians' expertise can once again play a major role in ensuring peace and stability. This conversation comes at an opportune time as Côte d'Ivoire has been selected by the Biden administration as one of the priority countries in the U.S. strategy to prevent conflict and promote stabilization. For those of you joining us in person and virtually around the world, please join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag parliamentarians and peace. Please welcome to the stage Honorable President Adam Abic to go, President of the National Assembly of Côte d'Ivoire, please. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I talk in French because you used to talk in French in my country. It's the language, official language, so I am sorry for my American friend, but I talk in French. Ladies and gentlemen, guests, Mr. Vice President of the Institute, ambassadors, it is a great honor for me to be here in the country of Uncle Sam, a country that we admire. I would like to welcome this wonderful initiative and opportunity that you are offering to my country through the National Assembly of Côte d'Ivoire. We are so happy to be here with you, and we share this vision for our country, and we share the vision with our President, Ala Sanwattara. We believe in the excellence of our parliamentary institutions. As you know, the relationship between our two countries goes back to 1961 with the first President of our nation, and our relations remain excellent between the Presidents Joe Biden and Ala Sanwattara. So, we are here today in a context of good relations between Côte d'Ivoire and the United States in this environment. We are here this morning to talk about parliamentary democracy, to share with you our experiences, our experiences in Côte d'Ivoire. Once more, I'd like to express all of my gratitude to you, and I will be ready to answer all questions that come up. There are no taboos today. Côte d'Ivoire is a country that wishes to strengthen its democracy. It relies on its citizenship and sovereignty, but also on its openness, because no country can live when it is closed in on itself. And so, for Côte d'Ivoire, openness is essential. And that is why we are here today in the United States within our partnership that falls into the excellent relationships between our heads of state. Mr. Vice President, if there are any questions, I am absolutely ready to answer them. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. I'd like to start with a question. Why are you here in the United States as President of Côte d'Ivoire's National Assembly? First of all, thank you. Thank you for having me and my delegation here in the United States. I am accompanied by the Vice President, Moïse Kekoudaoui, Executive Secretary of the main opposition party, and a Professor of Cardiology. I'm also accompanied by the former Minister of Energy and Oil of Côte d'Ivoire, Mr. Thomas Kamara, from the RHDP, which is the party in power. And I have other illustrious colleagues as well. Unfortunately, one of my colleagues was not feeling well and was not able to join us today. I hope he'll be able to catch up with us this evening. All of that is to say that our delegation that is here today represents all of the different orientations in our assembly. Concerning our presence here in the United States, it is related to parliamentary diplomacy. In Côte d'Ivoire, we believe that our institution has a role to play. First of all, we have a sense of accountability toward our people who have elected us. Now, regarding the ways that different powers interact, we see that parliamentary power is extremely important. And Africa, Africa should not simply need to follow along with decisions of more powerful countries. And so our parliamentary diplomacy needs to be a complementary diplomacy in order for us to be able to discuss different issues with parliaments around the world, so that parliaments in other countries do not make decisions that are then imposed upon us. The United States is an old democracy. And the United States is a symbol of the strength of institutions. For those reasons, it makes sense for us to be here in the United States. We can learn from the experience of American institutions. And we also hope to strengthen our relationships between the United States and the Côte d'Ivoire, although the relationship is already excellent. But we want our institutions, our parliaments, to have a strong relationship. And that is why we are here today, to inject new energy into the parliamentary relationship between our countries. You talked about the diversity of your delegation, political diversity, and even diversity in terms of the roles played. I remember when you came into office as the president of Côte d'Ivoire's National Assembly, you made sure to thank Alessane Ouattara, the president of the country, as well as former president Bagbo and former president Medier. What did that symbolize for you? As you know, there's a certain gratitude that I feel I had the chance before my election to serve as interim president of the National Assembly for my predecessor who was sick at the time. And during that time, I made a proposal to the different parliamentary groups. I suggested that we come up with a real parliamentary family, because what unites us is Côte d'Ivoire, the interests of our people. It's true that in politics we may take different positions, but as soon as we become members of the institution, we must think of Côte d'Ivoire above all. And that means that we must forge a family. What I can say is that before I was elected, before I was even interim president, the opposition was at the right, the party in power was on the left, and the two didn't communicate with each other. There was no communication between the two of them. So everyone came to the table with very fixed positions, and there was no discussion. And so there was no sense of listening to one another, having a real dialogue. Those things, along with compromise, are values that do not go against the idea of having different ways of thinking. Rather, compromise shows the different ways of thinking have come together. So I would like to commend the different political groups at the National Assembly who have shared with me their vision. During this entire time, we have tried to institute this sense of family. And when I was elected on June 7th, 2022, it gave me the opportunity to recognize the opposition because the president of Cote d'Ivoire, who appointed me, might be the R.H.T.P. president. But mathematically, our party was in the majority, so I could have thought, okay, that's sufficient. But it seemed important to me that we build this family together in the parliament. So I talked with the different parliamentary groups, and on the day of the election, what we expected was that the opposition would participate even in a passive way. The vice president, Moise Kikawe, took the floor and read a text on behalf of the opposition. And at the request of Henri Comédier and Laurent Bagbo, former president, asking them to vote for me. So for me, that represented a major advance because the fact that they read that text, that call to vote for me, had a huge impact. It expressed the shared desire to create this parliamentary family. It's a family that works in the ways that we came up with during this election, compromise, discussion, agreements. We try whenever possible to always find that which is going to unite us and bring us together rather than divide us. For those people who are following us online, Côte d'Ivoire is facing sub-regional instability, and there are terrorist attacks that have taken place, and there have been some coups in the sub-region. Today, what do you think are the roots of this instability in Côte d'Ivoire and in the sub-region? Before I address the matter of instability in Côte d'Ivoire, I think we have to go farther back in time. The deepest, oldest roots of instability in Africa come from electoral disputes. Those are the oldest causes. Ever since colonization independence, it seems clear to me, I wasn't around then, but I studied this, it seems clear to me that what would have been better would have been to come up with a structure for people to express themselves and to hand that kind of structure down from one generation to the next. When we gained our independence, certain political figures were imposed and they created, they generated the roots of this revolt, and so there have been coups after coups in many countries in the sub-region. These ancient roots of the multiple coups became over time community-based crises because a person leading the coup would belong to a specific community and then another community would get up in arms and so on and so forth. Then what happened next is that in certain countries, the crises came from poverty. There is also climate change, terrorism, which took advantage of this poverty and which has seen it as ripe conditions for terrorist acts. So what was clear was that young people didn't have enough access to jobs. 77% of Africans are young people in economic terms. If you look at a young population, you see that that's also a population of consumers, consumers with the purchasing power, but when that population is poor, things change drastically. So the lack of jobs for young people and terrorism have created a level of destabilization that has only increased. Democratic challenges in certain countries have unfortunately led to military forces or civilians creating ripe conditions for coups. Therefore, in Côte d'Ivoire, we have tried to avoid these pitfalls by fighting against poverty, especially because our country, following the 2010 elections, our country went through a post-electoral crisis with 3,000 people who died. We have drawn the necessary conclusions from this and taken on the responsibility for this and I would like to salute Alassane Wattara for all that the president has done and also the president, rather the opposition leader's willingness to take on his full responsibility. And in 2021, we saw that all three major leaders really wanted to focus on Côte d'Ivoire. Now, we have a sense of responsibility in all of this as officials. I was executive director up until one year ago. In the assembly, we do have an advantage. Well, there's the executive president of different parties, the party of Laurent Bagbo. And so this becomes the engine for social cohesion. We're creating this family, but I can also mention that we have this sense of responsibility and history has meant that we must have it. You talked about political instability and a democratic deficit. One of the causes is this question of term limits and the removal of term limits in the subregion. We've seen a number of heads of state, though the Constitution limited the number of terms decided to continue anyway. Removing this rule around the third or fourth term was made legal by the constitutional council. And so there is this question of legitimacy or legitimateness, rather. So what can you tell us about term limits and heads of state who decide to remove this limit? Here's what I can tell you. Term limits in and of themselves were voted upon by the different peoples. But each country has its own context, its own situation. Let's take the question of Germany. We had Angela Merkel who served for three terms and some people wanted her to serve four or five, but we don't really have the same situation. Today, each country in Africa needs to be to be able to look into the future and this relies on the voting of different laws. In Cote d'Ivoire, regarding the third term, I think you probably are indirectly talking about our country, but we had a constitution that was drafted in 2016. And we wanted, in the fifth of March 2020, Alessandro Watara announced that he would not run in the election that would be held in October 2020. So on March 10th, the prime minister, Mr. Coulibaly, was designated. He was designated before his party as being the next candidate for the 2020 elections for the RHDP party. However, our colleague was taken from us. Just two months before the election, I was executive director at the time, and we didn't have a choice. All I did was to take account of the state of mind in Cote d'Ivoire. And Cote d'Ivoire was on the point of implosion at that point. We thought that only two months from the elections, a different choice would have been deadly, not just for the party, but for the country. The president asked us to take time to reflect. As executive director of the party, I took on the responsibility of leading the party because I believed that any other solution could undermine all of the fundamental underpinnings of Cote d'Ivoire. So in terms of changing the constitution, I think that when a constitution is voted upon, certain provisions need to be put in place in order to preserve the dignity of those who are leaving. There's something else that we have noticed often in Africa as compared to developed countries. Former heads of state are treated with the dignity of the post that they occupied. But in Cote d'Ivoire today, whether this be president Bagbo or others, well, they are treated as the laws require. In 2020, we lost one prime minister after another, two in a row. But legally, the constitution allowed the president to be a candidate in the elections, legally. There are other interpretations, but legally, the president could run. So that was the situation. In terms of other countries, Guinea, Burkina Faso, the facts speak for themselves. These are countries that have undergone coups, so there are indeed lessons that we can learn from their situations. And I agree with you. Constitutions must be the compasses that guide our countries. We have a strong, solid constitution. And as President Obama said when he visited Ghana, at a certain moment, institutions need to be stronger than people in Africa. And that is what we are working on in Cote d'Ivoire, and what we have been working on since President Alas and Watara came to power. We've been working to, well, all of our institutions have been put into place, and we are working in, as we respect our texts, our laws. And then I will translate for the president. Mike, there are mics. Thank you very much for those insightful remarks. My name is Anne Watkowski. I'm the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations at the Department of State. My question to you is, can you offer us some insight on your views with respect to, as was mentioned earlier, the U.S. strategy to prevent conflict and promote stability, specifically our partnership with Cote d'Ivoire on this matter, which focuses very much on some of the challenges that you've already discussed around concerns regarding instability in the region. So my question is two part. Can you express to us, unpack for us, how you see the necessary approach, the tools, to addressing these challenges comprehensively from a national standpoint, one, and two, how you see opportunities for regional cooperation in this respect? Thank you. The moderators are repeating the questions in French. Cote d'Ivoire, today, has gone over its budget, specifically with regards to security. Today's budget shows that growth has reached roughly 50 percent, but there are two different levels of security. There's domestic security managed by the Ministry of the Interior, and that's the most important level of security for us, given that terrorism, as I was saying, is finding a home with the young unemployed people. So we need more police, more security agents, more intelligence, as people and communications like to say, information guides action. If you have security but no good intelligence policy, you're going to fail. So intelligence is absolutely necessary. Investments therefore have been made in intelligence. Today, when you look at our capital city, Abidjan, you can see that there is a policy to trace incidents when they occur, but that's not sufficient. The Ministry of Defense along our borders has instituted a policy to protect our borders using drones, using high-performing technology, and other security measures. But we need to go even further, given that Cote d'Ivoire is surrounded in the desert by countries that are in fragile positions. When you look at Cote d'Ivoire today, insecurity has gained ground and is now an issue in roughly 70 percent of the country in Wagatugu and several departments around Wagatugu. It's not such an issue, but the rest of the country, yes, in Mali, you have Bamako, but the terrorists have really taken over a lot of ground in Cote d'Ivoire, therefore. Given our economic success, our what we symbolize, we've become a target of these terrorists. The sub-region needs a real armed force that will support each country's armed forces or armies. That means creating that army, training it, and so on and so forth. All of that requires a lot of resources, and unfortunately, our countries do not have sufficient resources to do this. We need to build hospitals. We need to build schools, highways, roads. We don't have enough resources to meet all of our security needs, so it's all fine and well to support regional cooperation and sub-regional cooperation, but that needs to be in support of the national armies that are at the front lines in this battle against terrorists. When I took office on, or rather when I arrived in Cote d'Ivoire on April 3rd, I met with roughly 15 parliamentary presidents. There was the president of the Burkina Bay National Assembly. There was representative from Mali, from other countries as well, and I spoke with them about the problems that they're facing. And what they were all saying is that today, terrorism comes from within their countries. If you take Burkina Faso, for instance, young people go out in the morning, they get money, and they come back at night, and if they provide intel on certain houses, there'll be an attack, and they take on and off their army fatigues when it serves them. And we need to find a solution for this poverty that is affecting this country and other countries in the sub-region. I just would like to follow up on what was said regarding this question. What are the solutions that you suggest? You're talking about reinforcing the armed forces, but what about governance? What is needed in terms of governance? Because otherwise we might walk away with the impression that there's only one solution to the security issue. No, there are several different solutions. There's governance as well, of course. The people need to feel that even if the government has few resources, that the government is using those resources well. That is reassuring to the people. And they need to feel convinced that their taxes are going to a good purpose. There's the equitable distribution of wealth that is necessary. There's also training. We need to take our educational policy in our countries and update them. I've had the chance to visit countries that are emerging countries, and in Africa we need researchers. We need astronauts, but what is absolutely essential is training for our young people. They need to be trained to meet our needs so that they can be employable. With regards to the governance issue, we need to overhaul education and focus more on professional training for young people. Our healthcare systems need to be overhauled as well so that we can serve needs on a local level. It's good to have big hospitals, but we need local community health centers that can offer diagnostic services and keep tabs on the local population. President Alassane Huata has instituted a policy of creating community health centers in all the different villages. And that's true for the entire subregion regarding employment. What we need is for governments to withdraw from certain sectors to focus on security and education. That means we need to find private companies that can handle certain services for us. It's clear that the solution cannot be a security solution alone. Everything is interconnected, and that's what we started doing by organizing the creation of 2,000 to 3,000 new jobs in Cote d'Ivoire. But this process is a work in progress. Even if our financial partners provide support, we still need visibility. We need transparent management of the aid that will be provided to us. Hello and thank you to the Ivorian delegation for coming. My name is Catherine Kelly from the Center of Strategic Studies for Africa in Washington. Here's my question for you. What is your vision for the role of parliamentarians in the management and supervision of security? Do you see a way of promoting collaborative work between parliamentarians and other actors to fight against insecurity in order to guarantee citizen security? I'm asking you this question because in March we had the great honor of doing an exchange with four members of your assembly in our seminar in Accra. Thank you. We have a defense commission in parliament which is in contact with the Ministry of Defense and of Homeland Security. As I was saying, the effectiveness of our security policy must be based on a policy that allows the people to participate. And this participatory policy can only be put in place through the deputies. We hold information sessions with ourselves and the Ministry of Defense and increasingly we think that at the level of the police we need to have community policing. The people must no longer fear the police. The police must be seen as a partner. Thus the people can be a means of gathering intelligence. Sometimes the people who place bombs might live right next to the victim of the bombing right in the same neighborhood. So we need a community policing strategy. That is why it's so necessary to have visibility on regarding security and defense policy. We need to have access to some information. Of course we can't have access to all information. Regarding that point, we have a very close relationship with the Ministry of Defense. Furthermore, when there were the problems in Mali, the Ministry of Defense had received our commission for defense to update us on the situation of Vavorians detained in Mali. And we didn't need to make a lot of noise because there were already processes in place. So the parliament was involved. And all of that is to say that we have access to information because we have this sense of accountability toward our people. You've mentioned Burkina Faso and Mali and of course that's not just random. These are countries that have undergone difficult and tragic situations. And you've said that Côte d'Ivoire is an island in this tumultuous sea. What is the role of Côte d'Ivoire in resolving this situation of instability in those other countries? Subregional institutions alone are not able to find a solution. So what is the role of Ivorian leadership and what can parliamentarians do to resolve these situations in these other countries in the subregion? The situation of Burkina Faso and Mali, as you know, well, Côte d'Ivoire has a policy of openness. Nearly 26 percent of people in Côte d'Ivoire come from other countries and Malians and Burkina Bays are among the most numerous groups. And so when there is trouble in those countries, Côte d'Ivoire is very concerned. There are, there's migration, there are population movements and Côte d'Ivoire welcomes a very high number of these migrants. So this can destabilize Ivorian society. What we must do and what we do in parliament is this. We put transition parliaments in place for these countries in transition. We wanted to be close to the president of the republic to, well, because some subregional organizations had passed resolutions to prevent certain displacements. But we would agree that the more we isolate these countries, the less likely we are to find a solution. We need to stay in contact and maintain our relationships, not as a recognition of the people in power, but we need to maintain these relationships with these countries so that they can see that the world that they are in is not a world of coup d'etat. Our world is not one in which problems can be resolved using illegitimate and illegal institutions. And I think that this will be successful. Molly is currently going ahead with a referendum to adopt the new constitution. Guinea is doing something similar. I hope that Burkina Faso won't be far behind. In our conversations, we've seen that they see that they have no other alternative than to come back to what's normal. And by that, I mean elections and institutions. And so Côte d'Ivoire as the locomotive of the subregion, which is in constant contact with other heads of state and Iqawas. Well, we are doing as much as we can. We are now arriving at the end. So what do you expect concretely from your visit to the United States? What do you expect from American officials? Can you say as concretely as possible what you expect from this visit? What we expect from the United States is greater involvement. Currently, Africa, following close to 60 years of independence from many African countries, Africa is no longer off limits. We've reached a certain level of maturity and we're in a win-win situation when it comes to partnerships. That means we need greater involvement. Americans, given the development level of the country, well, Americans are essential to us in Africa. It's true that with the Russian-Ukrainian war today, we're heading toward a new geopolitical order. Different blocks are being built or groups. Inflation is running high and each country needs to handle its own domestic issues, but that's a real danger. Whether the threat is COVID, the Russian-Ukrainian war, or the energy crisis, all of these challenges require that we pool together our resources and come together to face them together. In Africa and in Cote d'Ivoire in particular, we want to be a driver of growth of different things. When it comes to the U.S. and France, the U.K., Germany, the EU, the U.S., we need our allies to come together in support of Africa because today, Africa is facing a certain number of challenges at the same time. Africa is the continent of the future, but that future requires planning. If we don't plan for it, what seems to be an opportunity today, and economists talk about Africa a lot, they say, Africa has the resources, the natural resources, has the youth, etc., so there's a lot of opportunity, but the youth can equally be a threat. If the U.S., in terms of its involvement and support of Africa, helps Africa focus on professional training with digital tools, for example, because we are the continent with the greatest growth of the digital economy, but all of that needs to be planned for, it needs structure. The U.S. has the experience that Africa needs to benefit from, so the U.S. needs to see Africa as a partner, an opportunity, a pro, and not a con. We can't stay stuck in old cliches. Africa is not something to be divided up or to be shared, it's a partner, it's a partner for the U.S., and I would say that's especially true of Kotiwa. Thank you so much, President.