OVER 3,600 Ivorians are confirmed to have fled to neighbouring Liberia, in a bid to escape the electoral violence triggered by the controversial presidential elections, according to a United Nations, UN report.

President Alassane Ouattara of Cote’d’Ivoire had won a third term in office on October 31 by a landslide in a controversial election, after the opposition had boycotted the poll after accusing him of breaking a two-term limit which was unconstitutional.

While Cote’d’Ivoire has a limit of two presidential terms, Ouattara insists a new constitution in 2016 gives him a chance to run for the elections.

Cote’d’Ivoire’s Constitutional Council also formally ratified President Ouattara’s re-election to a third term despite the tense election that has been marred by clashes and an opposition boycott.

“Alassane Ouattara is proclaimed elected in the first round,” the Council President Mamadou Kone said on Monday in a national broadcast.

At least 40 people have been killed in clashes between political supporters, protesters and security forces since Ouattara first announced he would run for the third term in August.

In early March, Ouattara said he would not seek another mandate, which seemed to end months of speculation that he would extend his stay beyond the two-term mandates.

However, Ouattara revised his position five months later following the sudden death of his handpicked successor, Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly.

Roseline Okoro, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ representative in Monrovia, said that the numbers had risen in the past week.

“We have 3,600 people who have already crossed from Ivory Coast to Liberia,” she said.

According to Okoro, about 1,600 Ivorians arrived in Liberia the day after the election, and most are younger people who are staying in local communities rather than refugee camps adding that the UN was distributing food, but shelter was “becoming a problem”.

With a population of 4.8 million people, Liberia is still recovering after back-to-back civil wars from 1989 to 2003 and West Africa’s 2014-2016 Ebola crisis.

Sester Logan, the director of the Liberian government’s refugee agency, said the country is not “economically ready to host the influx of refugees”.

He added that the actual numbers of people fleeing electoral violence were difficult to determine because of the porosity of Liberia’s border with Ivory Coast.

On Saturday, opposition leader Pascal Affi N’Guessan was arrested for creating a rival transitional government.

While other opponents to President Ouattara are under investigation for the insurrection in the country, alongside prosecutors who are pressing “terrorism” charges against more than a dozen of those who called for an election boycott.