Long-awaited public hearings to determine who is an Ivoirian citizen quietly restarted on Friday under the auspices of the army in the town hall in Adjamé, an inner-city neighbourhood in Abidjan, the country’s commercial centre.

“Ivorians and non-Ivorians: come to the public hearings assured of your safety, so that you will be able to live in a way that is legal,” said a statement issued on Friday from the office of Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny.

The hearings, which had started last July, were stopped in August amidst violence and disagreements between President Laurent Gbagbo and northern-based rebels over the peace process.

At the centre of Côte d'Ivoire’s four-year-long military and political crisis is the question of who has the right to citizenship and thus who has the right to vote. Supporters of the ruling Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) say that thousands of immigrants are trying to fraudulently obtain Ivorian nationality so that they can vote against incumbent Gbagbo.

Currently millions of Ivorians are not registered by the state. Providing them with identity papers, along with the disarmament of government militia and rebel troops, is a key condition for holding elections, which had been planned for October but have since been postponed.

In the public hearings judicial authorities are expected to issue birth certificates for as many as three million people. The applicants must be 13 years and older and show that they were born in Côte d'Ivoire by coming to the hearing accompanied by two witnesses aged 21 years old or older who were born before the applicant. If possible applicants should also come with identity cards of one or both of their parents.

On Friday, only six applicants sought birth certificates at Adjamé town hall. Of them the deciding judge and two magistrates only issued documents to two. The four other applicants were rejected because the authorities said they had not come with qualified witnesses.

"These are early days still," Jacqueline Obles, advisor to Prime Minister Banny told the press on Friday. “After Monday we think things will move faster as we are reopening hearings at 205 sites in areas controlled both by the government and the former rebels.”