Burundi: Human Rights Research

"President Pierre Nkurunziza warned on November 2, 2015, that anyone who failed to hand over weapons by November 7 would be “punished in accordance with the anti-terrorist law and fought like enemies of the nation.” He told security forces they could use all means at their disposal to find these weapons and re-establish security. Search operations began on November 8."

This 81-page report documents political killings stemming from the 2010 elections in Burundi. Human Rights Watch conducted extensive field research in Burundi in 2011 and early 2012 to document individual cases and patterns of political killings across the country. The research also focused on steps taken by government and judicial authorities in response to the political violence.

Political killings escalated throughout the year, with a string of targeted assassinations and a pattern of reprisals: killings of opposition sympathizers were quickly followed by killings of ruling party sympathizers, and vice-versa, leading to a cycle of violence that neither side seemed prepared to break.

This 69-page report documents abuses including torture, arbitrary arrests, banning of opposition activities, and harassment of civil society groups. Human Rights Watch called on the government to end the abuses and to strengthen institutional mechanisms to promote accountability by government officials and security forces.

This 47-page report is based on four months of field research in Bujumbura and four rural provinces. Since September 2009, Human Rights Watch has identified acts of violence initiated by supporters of several political parties, most often by members of their youth wings, which include large numbers of ex-combatants from the country’s civil war. They are often persuaded—sometimes with party money—to intimidate political rivals with verbal threats,vandalism, and physical assaults. The findings in this report provide insight into the nature of political violence in Burundi, the official handling of such incidents, and the experience of victims caught up in the fighting. They indicate deficiencies in the approach of the government, police, and judiciary in preventing violent confrontations, in treating all political sides equally, and in punishing those responsible for instigating and perpetrating political conflict.

This 105-page report finds that authorities have at times been directly involved in public killings and beatings of suspected criminals, or have facilitated them by forming untrained "security committees" that operate at the margins of the law. In other cases, officials have stood by while mobs attacked alleged criminals.

This report consists of narratives and photos of Burundian gays and lesbians that bring to life the daily struggles faced by the small lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in Burundi. Members of the community talk about how they have been fired from their jobs, beaten by parents and neighbourhood youth, and evicted from their homes.

This 42-page report documents 21 cases of beatings and torture of civilians carried out in October 2007 by a special reserve unit known as Rapid Mobile Intervention Group (Groupement Mobile d’Intervention Rapide, GMIR) in Muramvya province.

As part of a wider project funded by the European Union and other donors, OMCT organised an international seminar in Geneva on “Addressing the economic, social and cultural root causes of violence through the UN Special Procedures System” from 18 to 22 June 2007. This seminar, attended by representatives of national human rights NGOs from 14 countries, was an important element of OMCT’s three-year project on “Preventing Torture and Other Forms of Violence by acting on their Economic, Social and Cultural Root Causes.” This OMCT project is intended to develop concrete measures to act upon this link and reduce levels of violence associated with socio-economic conditions. The Special Procedures mechanisms represent a significant element in this regard. It is, therefore, important that national NGOs addressing both human rights and development issues are aware of how to interact most effectively with these mechanisms. This document contains expert papers and NGO case studies developed during the 2007 OMCT Special Procedures Seminar.