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IV. Background

Political context

In 2005 after more than a decade of civil war and a period of transition, the National Council for the Defense of Democracy—Forces for the Defense of Democracy (Conseil national pour la défense de la démocratie—Forces pour la défense de la démocratie, CNDD-FDD) won parliamentary and local administrative elections. Pierre Nkurunziza of the CNDD-FDD, which had been the largest rebel group fighting the government, ran unopposed in the indirect election for the presidency.  Nkurunziza took power promising that his government would be committed to human rights.²

A small rebel group, the National Liberation Forces (Forces Nationales pour la Libération, FNL) continued to wage armed conflict against government forces until September 7, 2006 when the government and the FNL signed a ceasefire agreement ending active hostilities in Burundi for the first time since 1993.³ The implementation of that agreement was delayed and, at the time of writing, FNL fighters awaited demobilization.

With a per capita income of U.S. $90 per year, Burundi is one of the poorest countries in the world, its chronic poverty worsened by the years of war.⁴ Floods and poor growing conditions caused food shortages in 2006, which were projected to continue into 2007, further stretching the resources of local communities.⁵

Children in conflict with the law

In Burundi, long-term pre-trial detention is a routine practice which the government has recognized as a structural problem in the justice system.⁶ While provision for bail exists in law, during its research Human Rights Watch found no cases to indicate that children in practice benefited from this provision and in general, it appears that it is rarely used.⁷ This leads to large numbers of prisoners awaiting trial mixed with those who have been convicted and causes overcrowding.  According to government statistics, in the end of 2006, 318 of the 401 children in prison were facing trial but not yet convicted.⁸

According to government statistics, the number of children in prison increased by 180 percent in just over three years, from 143 in October 2003 to 401 in December 2006.⁹

Comparison of child prison population between October 2003 and December 2006 for each prison in Burundi¹⁰

Of the children incarcerated in Mpimba central prison in early February 2007 nearly 40 percent were charged with or had been convicted of theft, just over a quarter were charged with or had been convicted of rape and just under a quarter  were charged with or had been convictedof participation in armed groups. The remaining 11 percent were charged with or had been convicted of various crimes, including murder, attempted murder, drug possession and assault.¹¹ 

No study has established why the number of children in detention appears to have increased, and whether it reflects a genuine underlying increase in juvenile crime or a more aggressive policing policy leading to more arrests.

A factor which one study on the related issue of street children captured was that the war had a “devastating impact” on children, leaving many “abandoned, orphaned, disabled and traumatized.”¹²Many children in conflict with the law, like those on the street, have equally been negatively impacted by the war and some were in fact street children prior to incarceration.

The charges for which they were incarcerated according to the 136 children in Mpimba Central Prison in Bujumbura in January 2007 were as follows:

Table 1 – Grounds for Arrest

Orphans and child labor

UNICEF information indicates that an estimated 15 percent of the children in Burundi have lost one or both parents, the majority due to disease and war.¹³ Within the research conducted by Human Rights Watch, the statistics indicate that the proportion of orphans is higher in prison than in the overall population, suggesting a potential correlation between the risk of a child coming in conflict with the law and facing prison and their status as an orphan as opposed to a child with both parents alive. Among the 136 children interviewed at Mpimba central prison, 78 of them or 57 percent had lost one or both parents. Almost 20 percent had lost both parents to either war or disease.¹⁴ Many children in prison told stories of witnessing the deaths of their parents and struggling to survive afterwards. Other children said when a parent remarried they had been forced to leave home and moved onto the streets.

Table 2 – Parental Status

Some children themselves had been injured in attacks that had killed their parents. Several showed Human Rights Watch researchers scars of injuries they had received during such attacks. “My father was killed when I was ten years old,” said Frederique N., who is now 16 years old. “It was 2000 and we were running to get to the border with Congo. I was holding my father’s hand when he stepped on a mine. My father died, but I was just hit by the shrapnel.”¹⁵ He has not had surgery to remove the pieces of metal from his arms.

Many children forced to fend for themselves end by becoming domestic workers¹⁶ or cattle or goat herders for the comparatively wealthy. Among the children surveyed at Mpimba central prison 30 percent (41 of 136) had been employed as domestics before being incarcerated, more than those who had been students, those doing other kinds of work, and the unemployed. Several said they had been falsely accused by employers who did not wish to pay their wages, an assessment borne out by an experienced Burundian human rights activist who said, “a lot of child domestics are falsely accused for rape and theft when their employers don’t want to pay them. There are many irregularities in the cases of child domestics.”¹⁷ The vulnerability of child domestic workers has been well-documented in countries around the world.¹⁸ These children work in relative invisibility for long hours, with little access to education.

Data from the 136 children interviewed in Mpimba Prison suggest that orphans work more frequently as domestics than other children: 41 percent of the orphans worked as domestics prior to incarceration compared to 29 percent among children with both parents alive and 26 percent among children with a single parent. In addition, 46 percent of those accused of rape worked as domestics prior to their incarceration, more than among any other type of occupation. The data further suggest that orphans were more frequently in jail as a result of having been accused of rape compared to the other groups.

Grounds for Arrest and Parental Status

According to several children, they were forced to drop out of school and leave their homes to find work after their parents died. Vital N., aged sixteen, said that he had left Muyinga province when his mother and father died from illness. “One day, I came back from the fields and [my mother] was there, dead on the floor,” Vital said. He lived on the streets before finding work as a domestic. He worked for several months without receiving his salary, and when he asked to be paid, he was accused of rape by his employer.¹⁹

Gaspar, a 15 year-old, said that he dropped out of school when his family fled to Tanzania in 2001 because of the war. When he returned, he found work tending cattle. “I wanted to run away,” said Gaspar. “My boss would beat me all the time, until I sometimes thought I would die and then he would refuse to pay my salary.” One day when his employer was out, Gaspar stole 250,000 FBU (US$250) and tried to escape. He was quickly caught and beaten again. He gave back all the money and pled guilty and is now serving two years in prison for theft.²⁰

Crimes related to the war 

During the civil war all sides recruited children as combatants and support workers, giving thousands of children access to weapons and training in their use.²¹ 

Since the current government took office in September 2005, police and military have arrested hundreds of children on charges of participating in the FNL. Nearly a quarter of the children held at Mpimba central prison (31 of 136) and a score of others elsewhere in the country are accused of having participated in an armed group, the usual charge made for those said to have assisted the FNL.²²

In addition to the dozens of children held in prisons, 26 others said to have participated in FNL ranks were held by the government in demobilization camps, first at Randa in Bubanza province and later in Gitega province.²³ According to the terms of the September 2006 ceasefire, a joint verification commission was to oversee cantonment and demobilization.²⁴ On February 19, 2007, this commission was put in place and began work on implementing the conditions of the ceasefire.²⁵

On February 8, 2007 the press reported that the minister of national solidarity declared that all children accused of FNL participation would be released, but at the time of this writing, it had not occurred.²⁶

With the war ending, some children were lured into the ranks of the FNL with the promise of getting easy money through the demobilization program.   Bonaventure N., currently held on charges of participating in armed groups said:

I thought about the FNL for a long time because of the extreme poverty of my family. I didn’t want to fight. A guy came here and said that since [FNL leader] Rwasa is near signing [a peace accord], we should all go join because our lives would change if we got the money. But, we were arrested before we could join.²⁷

In another case, disappointed members of the government-sponsored militia, the “guardians of the peace”, said resentment over not receiving anticipated demobilization payments led them to commit a crime.  Louis H. and several others had expected to receive a payment of US$100 promised to the “guardians of peace.” When the person drawing up the list of beneficiaries failed to include them, they stole clothes from him. “Everyone was being paid, but us,” Louis told Human Rights Watch, “so we decided to steal clothes from his house. But we got caught.”²⁸ He has been sentenced to three years for theft.

Former combatants, including children, still in possession of firearms have committed theft and other crimes, which has generated a general suspicion that all persons with firearms may have committed crimes. For example, one 14-year-old awaiting trial told Human Rights Watch researchers that he was wrongly accused of armed robbery simply because he had tried to hand in his Kalashnikov to a military post shortly after four former combatants had been arrested for theft in the area. A rebel combatant since the age of nine, the child had been recruited by force after his mother died of illness and his father had been killed in an attack.²⁹