Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel received the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Unesco Peace Prize, during a ceremony in the Ivorian capital Yamoussoukro, rewarding in particular her action in the massive reception of refugees by Germany in 2015.

• Merkel, who led Germany for 16 years, had welcomed more than 1.2 million refugees and asylum seekers at the peak of the migrant crisis fueled in particular by the war in Syria, In 2015 and 2016.
• Some 2,000 people were invited to the awarding of this prize created in 1989 and which has rewarded in the past Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, Lula and François Hollande.
• Former Ivorian presidents Henri Konan Bédié and Laurent Gbagbo, now in opposition, were also present alongside the current head of state.