Asylum and refugee status in Côte d'Ivoire

Refugee status in Côte d'Ivoire is governed by Law No. 2023-590 of 7 June 2023, whose purpose is to define who is a refugee in the country. Côte d'Ivoire is also a party to the 1969 OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. Article I(2) of that convention covers people forced to leave their country because of events seriously disturbing public order and allows group (prima facie) recognition in situations of mass displacement.

The national body responsible for refugees and stateless people is the Direction d'Aide et d'Assistance aux Réfugiés et Apatrides (DAARA), formerly known as SAARA, which works with the UNHCR office in Abidjan.

UNHCR's statistics for Côte d'Ivoire are compiled from its registration database together with DAARA's records, which shows that asylum seekers are registered jointly by the two bodies. In the north of the country, new arrivals from Burkina Faso and Mali have been registered at household level by partners on the ground. About 90,000 refugees and asylum seekers were registered as of 31 August 2025, most of them in the northern regions of Bounkani and Tchologo, with smaller groups in Abidjan and San Pedro.

The official pages available online do not set out a step-by-step individual procedure, filing deadlines or decision times. Anyone who wants to claim asylum in Côte d'Ivoire should contact DAARA or the UNHCR office in Abidjan directly. A claim is made inside the country; no official source describes applying from abroad at an Ivorian embassy.

By an interministerial order of 2 July 2025, Côte d'Ivoire granted refugee status on a prima facie basis to a large group of asylum seekers from Burkina Faso and Mali, including those registered since May 2021 after fleeing into the north of the country. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights welcomed the decision in November 2025 and called for its full implementation, including the prompt issue of documents to the people concerned.

Before this order only a small share of the forcibly displaced population held legal refugee status, nearly all of them living in towns, mainly Abidjan. Refugees from other countries of origin, such as Liberia, the Central African Republic, Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, appear in UNHCR's figures as individually recognised refugees.

The government authority is DAARA, the refugee and statelessness directorate, which also handles statelessness cases. UNHCR runs a multi-country office in Côte d'Ivoire and publishes regular statistics with DAARA. For questions about the procedure, the documents issued to asylum seekers and refugees, or access to services, contact DAARA or UNHCR in Abidjan; their official pages do not currently publish these details.