Every political act rests, consciously or otherwise, upon a particular understanding of the human person, society, the Nation and power. Those who claim to have no doctrine do have one; they have simply never examined it.

This text is neither an electoral programme, nor a national project, nor a contract for a term of office. It sets out no measures and promises no figures. It states the enduring principles that will guide the decisions of our Movement in all circumstances and whatever the cost.

I must explain how it came into being, for that alone makes it credible.

This year, I was asked a long series of questions about the human person, the Nation, justice and power. I answered them alone, without notes, without an adviser and without seeking to please. We then reopened the Statutes signed by our founders in Abidjan on 26 July 2019—which I had not read again for years.

They already spoke of equality of opportunity, social justice and intergenerational solidarity, and of the commitment to work towards a new social compact.

Seven years later, without remembering those words, I had said the same thing again.

I did not, therefore, invent this doctrine for a congress. I rediscovered it. It had been there from the first day, written by those who founded this Movement—and we had not yet given it a name.

Today, I give it one.

In 1992, I arrive at the University of Cocody. I have come from the Lycée Classique de Bouaké. I have worked hard. I am a good student.

I am not awarded the scholarship.

A fellow student, who has worked less than I have, receives it. I ask him how. He tells me that he gave ten guinea fowl to the head of scholarships.

I, the child of a poor family, had neither the idea nor the means.

I have never forgotten that scene, and everything that follows springs from it.

For it does not merely tell us that corruption is ugly. It tells us four things.

It tells us that merit exists: I had worked harder.

It tells us that merit can be stolen—not by chance, not by fate, but by a man at a counter, in exchange for ten guinea fowl.

It tells us that poverty is not only a lack of money; it is also a lack of access to the unwritten codes. Neither the idea nor the means.

And it tells us that the scene of the crime is the school—the one door through which a poor child can find a way out.

In the end, I did obtain my degree. They did not steal it from me; they only tried.

What the struggle took from me, it took elsewhere. I did not see my children grow up.

A man who writes a doctrine about what we owe the generations, but who did not see his own grow up, knows what he is talking about when he speaks of the price.

I did not wage this struggle for my generation. I waged it for the generation to come—and in doing so, I lost my own.

We affirm that every human being possesses a dignity that depends neither upon birth, wealth, origin, religion nor social condition.

A human being is born neither good nor bad, but with the capacity to become either—and is shaped by family, school, community and institutions.

No one comes from nowhere. The human being is not an isolated individual who one day decides to enter society. Each of us is born of two people, raised by parents and formed by a community. In our villages, a child's upbringing was not solely the concern of the father and mother; it was everyone's concern.

That is why a Nation's foremost wealth lies neither beneath its soil, nor in its natural resources, nor in its roads.

A Nation's foremost wealth lies in the women and men it forms.

And we add this, which is the measure of every doctrine: what we owe to the person who can never give us anything in return. We owe that person affection, fraternity and solidarity. A society that owes nothing to those who can never repay it is not a society; it is a market.

None is born free of debt.

Each of us inherits a capital we did not create: a language we did not invent; a peace we did not win; a school we did not build; land cleared by the dead whom we never knew. Whoever has succeeded has travelled along a road they did not build.

From that inheritance ariseth an obligation. That is the debt.

But our debt is not the debt described by doctrines from elsewhere. It cannot be paid off and it never expires. No tax can discharge it; we are never free of it.

It is handed down; and it shall be handed down improved.

Yet nothing is improved by mere repetition. To receive is not to obey; to receive is to judge. To preserve what is just. To correct what is inadequate. To abolish what is unjust or wrong.

This debt reaches further into memory than we do. More than four thousand years ago, on this continent, people already linked truth, justice and balance to the conduct of each person and to the duty of the ruler. At the end of life, a man was not weighed by his power; his heart was weighed against a feather.

From that inheritance, we retain reciprocity, the protection of the weak against the powerful, and fidelity to one's word.

We do not inherit Côte d'Ivoire from our parents; we borrow it from our children. More than a century ago, an elder of West Africa expressed this better than any treatise ever could:

“The land belongs to a vast family, of whom many are dead, a few are living, and countless members are yet unborn."

From this follows a principle that we hold to be absolute:

Any policy that enriches the present generation by impoverishing the next is illegitimate, whatsoever its immediate benefit.

And here I say what politicians never say, because it is the only promise I can honestly make:

I would rather my generation suffered so that tomorrow might be better for our children. But no future can justify reducing those now living below the threshold of dignity.

We owe a debt to the community. But the community owes us this in return: that our effort shall not be stolen.

Merit is no favour to be bestowed; it is a right to be defended.

Corruption is not a vice to be deplored; it is theft. It takes from the person who has worked and gives to the person who has paid. And its gravest crime is not that it enriches a few; it is that it teaches an entire generation of young people that effort counts for nothing and connections count for everything.

A country in which connections secure what work should earn is a country that has abandoned its poor children.

From this principle follows a requirement, and it is not negotiable:

Access to every public good—scholarship, competitive examination, public contract, employment, office or title—shall rest upon a criterion that is written, public and verifiable.

Not as an act of virtue. As a matter of justice. Because this is the only way to restore to a poor child the right to rely upon their own work.

And because wealth has meaning only when it improves the human condition, the primary purpose of every economic policy must be to enable each person to live with dignity from the fruits of their labour.

No lasting transformation begins anywhere but at school.

No economic, institutional or technological reform will have a lasting effect unless it is preceded by the formation of women and men who are upright, disciplined, responsible and free.

A school does more than impart knowledge. It forms citizens. It develops intelligence and character, a respect for effort and for the law, love of country and devotion to the common good.

Education is the most strategic of all public policies.

But we can go no further without saying what we mean by justice in education, for everything else is decided here.

God giveth unto each person two arms. When He giveth but one, society must provide the other.

Equal dignity at birth; equitable means whereby that dignity may be made effectual.

Justice does not, therefore, consist in distributing the same goods to everyone. It consists in enabling each person to choose their own life—and thus, in turn, to honour what they owe to their own people. For among us, a man is fully a man only when he can fulfil his place and responsibilities among his own. A father who cannot feed his children cannot repay his debt.

An African expressed it before us, and better than we can. Joseph Ki-Zerbo: “Development means multiplying the possibilities from which people may make liberating choices."

The Nation is not an administrative organisation. It is a community of destiny—the inheritance received from past generations and the responsibility assumed towards those yet to come.

Côte d'Ivoire's wound has a name: division. Hatred founded upon origin, region or religion. It has cost us lives. It still prevents us from becoming a Nation.

We reject it. But we also reject the remedy proposed by others—the remedy of erasing who we are.

For national unity requireth not uniformity.

Our languages, traditions and peoples are not burdensome relics; they are civilisations, and the plurality of civilisations enriches humanity. We shall not allow the languages, traditions and peoples of Côte d'Ivoire to disappear in the name of an imposed uniformity. A people addressed in its own language is a people whose right to matter is recognised.

But the line is clear and admits of no exception:

Language, yes. Identity as a criterion, never. We may celebrate our ethnic community. We must never use it to allocate offices, public contracts, scholarships or land.

And this is how we shall combat division—not with an imported word, but with a truth of our own:

I ask no Ivorian to cease standing in solidarity with their own people. I tell each of them that their people are more numerous than they think.

We abolish not African solidarity; we widen its circle until it embraceth the Nation.

The State exists for three purposes, and three purposes only.

To protect. To ensure tranquillity. To develop. Unto these three ends shall every function of the State be ordered.

We did not say “to ensure security". We said "to ensure tranquillity". Security may leave a person under surveillance. Tranquillity leaves a person free.

In our villages, our homes had no locks—because people did not steal. This is not nostalgia; it is a measure. A society in which people bolt their doors three times over is a society that has failed, whatever its rate of economic growth.

And this is what the State must cease to do, for we have experienced it in our own flesh:

It does not destroy freedoms. It does not imprison people for their opinions. It does not enter people's homes arbitrarily. It does not dispossess. It does not tax without end.

The State is neither the master of citizens nor their adversary. It serves the common good. On the day it becomes an instrument of oppression, it ceases to be a State and becomes an occupying force in its own country.

Finally, some goods do not belong to the generation in power. The subsoil, minerals, oil, water and land belong to those yet unborn. How they are exploited and how their products are marketed may be debated. Whether collective control of them may be irreversibly alienated may never be debated.

Justice is the foundation of civil peace. There can be no lasting freedom and no lasting prosperity without the rule of law.

None is above the law; neither is any beneath its protection.

The humblest citizen must be able to obtain justice against the most powerful ruler whenever the law is on that citizen's side. Justice protects the weak, constrains the powerful and safeguards the freedom of all.

The most difficult question remains, and I shall not evade it, for one day we shall be called upon to answer it—and by then it will be too late to begin thinking about it.

What shall we do with those who have caused our people to suffer?

There shall be neither impunity nor vengeance.

No impunity: forgiveness granted without justice is an insult to victims. No one should be asked to forgive a crime that no one has even acknowledged.

No vengeance: vengeance is the victim striking back; justice is the polity judging in the victim's stead. The whole of civilisation lies in that single transition, and a people that forgets it returns to war.

Moral forgiveness belongeth unto the victim—never unto the State.

The polity judgeth. The victim chooseth. The Nation healeth.

Freely given, forgiveness doth not abolish justice; it openeth a path unto healing.

Justice first. Forgiveness, if the victim so willeth. Reconciliation, that healing may come. Forgetting, never.

I am told that young Ivorians are losing their way. I hear talk of their moral decay.

My answer is this.

When a young man has nothing left but his body to sell in order to eat, it is not he who is morally corrupt. It is we who are.

That young man is the child of the ten guinea fowl, thirty years on. He has neither the idea, nor the means, nor the qualification, nor the connection. Everything has been taken from him—except his body.

A system that leaves its young people with nothing but their bodies to turn into money is not merely immoral. It is a system that has failed.

We do not want a country in which a young person's body is their last remaining capital.

Power is neither a privilege nor an end in itself. It is a trust.

A leader must never forget this: the office they hold does not belong to them. It has been entrusted to them, temporarily, by a people who expect results, not privileges. Those who forget this—those who confuse service with self-indulgence—have misunderstood the purpose of the struggle.

Political office shall be held as service rendered unto the Nation, and not as a privilege to be enjoyed.

We seek to foster a public culture founded upon integrity, truth, responsibility, merit, discipline and fidelity to one's word. Corruption, falsehood, cheating and favouritism destroy the trust without which no Nation can stand.

I shall be the first to submit to these standards. For a leader who demands of his senior colleagues a rigour that he does not apply to himself has no moral authority to demand it.

And I know the worth of one man's promise. Justice rests upon no man's virtue, even if he is a king. A people who entrust their fate solely to the character of their ruler will have to begin all over again with the next.

But a doctrine is not judged by the promises of them that profess it; it is judged by the rules it imposeth.

We ask not that our word be taken on trust. We ask that the rules be just—and that never again shall any child need ten guinea fowl.

Ours is not a doctrine of handouts. We do not promise to distribute to the poor what we have taken from the rich while leaving untouched the system that produces both.

Merely to repair an unjust outcome is to leave untouched the mechanism that produced it. And redistribution through a captured State only feeds that capture.

We do not merely correct the outcome. We change the starting point.

Nor is ours a doctrine of freedom alone. Anyone who tells a poor child that they are free to succeed, without providing education, healthcare and the security afforded by law, gives that child nothing; they merely make the child responsible for their own failure.

Finally, our doctrine claimeth not to be a science. It is a demand. That which we believe cannot be proved—but every means we employ shall prove itself.

Not a politics of words. A politics of proof.

A doctrine that an activist cannot repeat to a neighbour is not a doctrine; it is an essay.

Here is ours. It fits on one line, and it contains everything that has gone before.

“We owe everything unto them that came before us.

Unto them that are yet unborn, we owe that which is better.“

Everything—because we created none of what we inherit: the language, the peace, the school, the land cleared by the dead whom we never knew. That is the debt.

Something better—because passing an inheritance on is not enough; we must pass it on improved. And an inheritance is improved only by protecting the efforts of those who carry it forward. That is merit.

Every politician promises their children a future. None says that they owe those children something better than they themselves received—which means accepting that they must make good the difference.

Doctrines of solidarity alone have debt, yet forget effort. Doctrines of freedom alone have merit, yet forget the village. We hold both—and therein lieth our distinctive proposition.

Générations et Peuples Solidaires. Our sentence is simply our name, unfolded.

The development of a Nation results neither from economic growth alone nor from the power of the State alone. It results from forming citizens who are free, upright, responsible, hardworking and committed to solidarity.

We want a Republic in which freedom is exercised under the protection of the law; in which work enables every person to live with dignity; in which justice protects every citizen regardless of their name; and in which solidarity binds generations and peoples together for the long term.

Générations. Et Peuples. Solidaires.

Our name bore the doctrine before we knew how to write it.

⸻

Côte d'Ivoire will become a great Nation on the day when each of her sons and daughters regards service to the common good as the highest honour.

And on the day when no child of Bouaké shall ever again need ten guinea fowl to obtain that which is their due.

Guillaume Kigbafori SORO

President of Générations et Peuples Solidaires

DOCUMENTARY NOTE — FORMAL IDENTITY AND STATUS OF THE TEXT

This note stands outside the doctrine. It forms no part of it and alters neither its meaning nor its scope.

Designation: DEBT AND MERIT — the founding doctrinal text of Générations et Peuples Solidaires

Version: Definitive doctrinal text presented, heard and approved by the National Conference for Citizen Expression on 22 August 2026

Date of adoption: 22 August 2026

Supersedes: Consolidated doctrinal text no. 2, amended on 10 August 2026, which ceased to be the active text upon adoption of this version but remains preserved for historical and evidential purposes, together with the earlier consolidated versions.

Purpose of this version: to record the definitive text approved by the National Conference for Citizen Expression. It incorporates the amendment of 10 August 2026 concerning justice, forgiveness and reconciliation: removal of the sentence “The State does not forgive; it judges"; specification that forgiveness is moral forgiveness; insertion of the formulations "The polity judgeth. The victim chooseth. The Nation healeth." and "Freely given, forgiveness doth not abolish justice; it openeth a path unto healing."; and amendment of the closing maxim by adding "Reconciliation, that healing may come."

Earlier insertions: the four statements in Chapter III and the statement in Chapter X, settled by presidential decision, are preserved in full.

Author and doctrinal authority: the President of Générations et Peuples Solidaires.

Institutional status: definitive version adopted by the National Conference for Citizen Expression and sole active doctrinal text.

Adopting body: Conférence Nationale d'Expression Citoyenne (CNEC), meeting in extraordinary session on 22 August 2026.

French source: LA DETTE ET LE MÉRITE — definitive version approved by the CNEC on 22 August 2026.

Translation status: this British English version faithfully reproduces the adopted doctrine. In the event of any divergence of meaning, the adopted French text shall prevail.