Country profilesBurundi

Humanitarian profile

Reintegration of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Tanzania poses a major challenge. They are putting pressure on health and education services and disputes over property need to be resolved as well as reconciliation among communities. The World Food Programme says half of Burundians are chronically malnourished. Food insecurity is worsened by natural disasters like floods.

Country snapshot

Burundi is in many ways Rwanda’s southern twin, and both are trying to put Hutu-Tutsi ethnic conflict behind them and stabilise a fragile society.
Both have a Hutu majority and a Tutsi minority that was for centuries the ruling class. The neighbours are small, poor and densely populated. Burundi suffered more than a decade of civil war from 1994  which killed more than 300,000 people. A power-sharing deal was agreed in 2005 and the last Hutu rebel group laid down its arms in 2009 to join the government. It remains one of the world’s poorest countries and comes near the bottom of many international tables that measure a society’s success.

Government

President Pierre Nkurunziza is the head of state and of government. His National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) won parliamentary elections in June 2005 and MPs voted him into office two months later, following the rules laid down in a new constitution. The legislative branch is made up of the National Assembly and Senate. The assembly has a minimum 100 seats: 60 for Hutus and 40 for Tutsis, at least 30 must be women. If there is a shortfall of either ethnic group, or in the number of women, additional legislators can be nominated to make up the numbers. A further three additional seats are reserved for the Twa ethnic group.

The opposition withdrew from the 2010 presidential elections, leaving Nkurunziza without a challenger. The opposition complained of intimidation and fraud. The leader of the opposition Agathon Rwasa went into hiding saying the government planned to arrest him. A series of grenade attacks in the capital during the election period killed at least eight people.

Economy

Burundi is agricultural, rural, economically underdeveloped and largely dependent on foreign aid.
It has poor infrastructure, intermittent electricity, minimal industry and exports. The latter are dominated by tea and coffee but in total amounted to only some $80 million a year as of 2009. The state is heavily involved in the economy and is trying to privatise enterprises, but these efforts are falteri

Burundi ranked close to the bottom in the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures life expectancy, education and GDP. Nine out of 10 Burundians are farmers. Most live under the poverty line and education is poor, while population growth is among the highest in Africa. Despite this bleak snapshot, things are improving thanks to the end of the war which ravaged the economy. Peace has boosted economic activity; during the war per capita annual income fell sharply.  The country has joined the East African Community, tying it to big regional markets such at Kenya and Uganda. In 2009, foreign creditors cancelled most of Burundi’s debts of more than $1 billion.

History

For centuries, Burundi was a feudal aristocracy where a small ruling class, the Tutsis, were in charge.
In the colonial scramble for Africa, the Germans took over the kingdom in the 1890s. When they lost World War One, the League of Nations gave Belgium a mandate to govern Ruanda-Urundi (Rwanda/Burundi), which it did through Tutsi kings. Burundi gained independence in 1962 under a Tutsi king but within a year thousands of Hutus had fled to Rwanda following ethnic violence.

Hutus – 85 percent of the population -- started to demand a bigger say but were thwarted. They suffered massacres, in 1972 and 1988 among others, as Tutsi leaders fought among themselves, overthrowing the monarchy, staging coups and turning the country into a one-party state for over a decade. Reforms brought in a pro-Hutu government in 1993 but hopes of a new start were soon dashed. Tutsi soldiers killed the new leader, plunging the country into ethnic war.

The next president, Cyprien Ntaryamira - a Hutu - and his Rwandan counterpart were killed when their plane was shot down in Rwanda in April 1994. The incident helped sparked Rwanda’s genocide, worsened violence in Burundi and sent waves of refugees fleeing both ways across their borders. After more setbacks and false dawns, regional peace talks led by South Africa’s Nelson Mandela led to a transitional government in 2001, which over the next few years signed peace deals with the various warring factions – including the CNDD-FDD led by the current president.

African Union and United Nations peacekeepers moved in to help demobilise rebel forces and voters approved a new power-sharing constitution in 2005.  However, the political climate soon deteriorated as parties proved unable to share power amicably. After the 2005 elections, the ruling party amended the constitution to alter the number of ministries allocated to each party. There was a political crisis in 2007 as more than 22 parliamentarians defected from the CNDD-FDD to the opposition. The president used the constitutional court to make them give up their seats in parliament.

In the lead up to the 2010 polls, there were dozens of grenade attacks on the offices of the ruling party. Opposition politicians were arrested and their freedom of movement curtailed.

As is common in post-conflict situations, there is need to transform the political culture into one where former rebel groups trust the democratic rules of the game instead of resorting to violence.

Legal snapshot

The legal system is based on civil law inherited from former colonial powers Germany and Belgium, as well as customary law. The Supreme Court can review legislation.

Burundi has not accepted compulsory International Court of Justice jurisdiction. It recognises the authority of the International Criminal Court.

It gets an overall ‘very weak’ rating from U.S.-based non-governmental organisation Global Integrity which measures anti-corruption measures and government accountability. In 2009, anti-corruption campaigner Ernest Manirumva was abducted and killed. He worked for a government agency overseeing public contracts.