Burundi Update

22 October, 1996

Danger of Spill-over in Great Lakes Region

The crisis in Burundi has reached a dangerous and probably critical point. Some three years after the current wave of ethnic violence began, the overall death toll in Burundi has passed 150,000 as new and ominous signs emerge that the crisis may be about to spill over and engulf parts of neighbouring Zaire, Rwanda and Tanzania. Every week in Burundi some 600 to 1,000 people are killed—the vast majority are women and children, almost all are civilians. Violent attacks on civilian communities have in turn triggered massive population movements: latest reports indicate that approaching a million people in Burundi—or one in six of the country’s population—are either refugees or internally displaced.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) has been monitoring the situation in Burundi since early 1996. In April 1996 the organisation published a preliminary policy report which examined a number of options for preventive and remedial action in relation to the Burundi crisis and assessed international reaction to a proposal by the UN Secretary General for a multination military force to intervene in Burundi if conditions worsen significantly.

Since then ICG has continued to follow developments in Burundi closely, keeping in touch with NGOs, field workers, journalists and decision-makers in governments and the UN. Through a series of targeted advocacy initiatives, the organisation has sought to maximise support for a number of effective preventive policy options.

In particular, ICG has argued for the following:

  • High-level diplomatic pressure to be exerted on the leaders of the region and on factional leaders within Burundi to engage via the Nyerere peace process in immediate and constructive negotiations aimed at addressing a range of problems that underlie the current crisis in Burundi, including impunity, discrimination and the ethnically-biased machinery of state.

  • Urgent action to be taken immediately to reassert international control of refugee camps in the region and crack down on military training and other militia activities that are occurring in some of the camps, in particular those in eastern Zaire and western Tanzania.

  • Detailed, practical and credible contingency plans to be drawn up for a multinational military intervention in Burundi in the event of genocide occurring.

ICG board members in the United States have urged the US government to accept responsibility for co-ordinating and supporting action along these lines. Meetings have been held with William Perry, the US Defence Secretary, Tony Lake, President Clinton’s National Security Adviser, other key Administration officials and leading members of Congress. In addition, ICG president Nicholas Hinton has appeared on television news and discussion programs in Europe and the United States, articles have been placed in leading newspapers around the world and regular press releases have been issued in response to events on the ground, setting out ICG’s position and recommending the specific steps that need to be taken if the international community is to prevent a full-blown catastrophe overtaking Burundi.

In mid-September 1996, a group of ICG board members, led by Congressman Stephen Solarz and accompanied by a number of advisers, held meetings with UN officials and key diplomatic representatives from Burundi, the Great Lakes region and leading Security Council states. A follow-up meeting was held some days later with the international mediator in the crisis, Julius Nyerere. A number of possibilities for preventive action emerged from these discussions and ICG is now intent upon developing more detailed proposals and seeking to build support for those proposals both within Burundi and the surrounding region and among the wider international community. Confidential discussions with key stakeholders continue.
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