A/HRC/22/66 Ndolamb Ngokwey, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Coordinator in Côte d’Ivoire. 8. The Expert welcomes the support given to him by the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) and by mission officials, which enabled him to travel far inside the country and to meet various actors. In particular, he thanks the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Côte d’Ivoire, the Deputy Special Representative of the SecretaryGeneral for the Rule of Law, the Director of the Human Rights Division and his staff for their support which was crucial for the actual organization of his visit. 9. In addition, the Expert conducted a visit to The Hague, in the Netherlands, from 30 to 31 August 2012, in order to discuss cooperation issues with International Criminal Court (ICC) authorities. In particular, he met with Sang-Hyun Song, ICC President; Fatou Bensouda, ICC Prosecutor; and Silvana Arbia, ICC Registrar. The Expert wishes to thank ICC officials for the fruitful exchanges concerning the complementarity of their mandates, the central role and impact of justice in the national reconciliation process in Côte d’Ivoire and the need for the ICC to lead the Ivorian judicial system by example, in particular with regard to fairness and impartiality. Furthermore, the Expert conducted an exchange with Stephen Rapp, United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes, on the issue of impunity in Côte d’Ivoire. II. Context analysis A. Subregional instability 10. Almost two years after the post-electoral crisis, Côte d’Ivoire is gradually resuming its place on the African and international stage. President Alassane Ouattara is also Chairperson of the Economic Community of West African States and, in that capacity, is coordinating the Community’s response to the crisis in the Sahel region in general and in the north of Mali in particular. 11. Located to the north of Côte d’Ivoire, Mali is an open door to the Sahara and the Sahel, a particularly vast area over which neighbouring States exercise no effective control. This factor favours the presence of groups such as Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa and Ansar Dine. The geographical factor also explains a central aspect of the crisis in the Sahel region: the strategic alliance between drug traffickers who seek means of transporting drugs to the Mediterranean coast and the European market, and Islamist groups that need arms and money in order to extend their influence in the region. This strategic alliance is a time bomb that will profoundly destabilize all countries in the region for quite some time. 12. As the Expert indicated in his previous report, Côte d’Ivoire is a microcosm of the region; with its ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, it is [also] a microcosm of the subregion. The Ivorian conflict cannot, therefore, be contained without taking into account the subregional dimension as a whole. Just as the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire has created a risk of instability in the subregion that has security, humanitarian, economic and social repercussions for neighbouring countries, the crisis in north Mali and the Sahel is likely to amplify and exacerbate the political and intercommunity fractures inherited from a decade of total crisis and is even likely to eradicate the process of political, economic and social change under way in Côte d’Ivoire. GE.13-10074 5