E/CN.4/2005/18/Add.3 page 13 solutions are not found urgently, may lead to the emergence of real xenophobia, that is, a system in which ethnic hostility conditions one person’s perception of another, moulds the deep structure of community identities, dictates individual behaviours, shapes social, economic and political relations and finds formal expression in laws and institutions. While such a system does not yet exist in Côte d’Ivoire, it is a looming threat, to be averted at all costs. 40. The Special Rapporteur has identified the following manifestations of this dynamic: the political and ideological manipulation of ethnic factors; and a gradual withdrawal into ethnic identities as a result of the current political violence, which is reflected in a conflation of ethnicity, culture and religion, and an aggressive ethnicization of signs and symbols, and of the expressions of cultural diversity. A. Manipulation of ethnic factors for political and ideological purposes 41. Ethnic factors in Ivorian society have for many years - and increasingly - been subject to political manipulation. In Côte d’Ivoire as elsewhere in Africa, the colonial Power frequently exploited ethnic differences to divide and rule, or else, using anthropology and ethnology, ethnicized groups and communities whose relationships had been regulated by traditional values and cultural practices for jointly dealing with ethnic tensions. Economic imperatives such as labour-force mobility did not respond to any desire to promote a genuine, interactive coexistence that might have fostered a national consciousness as opposed to the colonial policy of assimilation. Later, President Houphouët-Boigny found the implicit tensions within Ivorian society relatively manageable and was able to maintain a generally quiescent inter-ethnic coexistence. However, his approach to ethnic tensions, a mix of traditionalist pragmatism, political opportunism and the use of corruption and repression, within a non-democratic, one-party system, did nothing to neutralize the threat of conflict those tensions posed in any deep or lasting way. During his reign, Côte d’Ivoire was the scene of both xenophobic violence targeting foreign groups and political repression directed against particular Ivorian ethnic groups and their leaders. 42. This tendency finally took political expression in 1990, with the introduction of a multiparty system in which ethnic tension became a decisive political factor. In the forced transition from a paternalistic single-party system to a democratic multiparty one, in the context of multi-ethnic Côte d’Ivoire, it was only too tempting to play the ethnic card in the political manoeuvring, i.e., in the absence of any debate on ideas or substantive platforms, to resort to ethnic considerations to build up a militant political base for the conquest of power. In this context, “ivoirité”, or Ivorianness, became the conceptual basis for the construction of an ideology of political manipulation of the ethnic factor. B. “Ivoirité”: ethnicity as ideology 43. According to some of the key political figures active in the political arena of the time, whom the Special Rapporteur met, and including Laurent Dona Fologo, the current President of the Economic and Social Council, the term ivoirité had originally been used to meet the need for a cultural rallying cry and was coined by President Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal during a visit to Côte d’Ivoire in the 1970s. In the view of the Minister of Human Rights, however, the notion dates back to 1974 and derives from the poet Niangoran Porquet’s concept of “griotique”.7 Over and above the term’s intellectual pedigree, which would certainly make a