Analysis: Upcoming polls to test Burundi’s fragile peace

Photo: Jane Some/IRIN

BUJUMBURA,  – Next year’s elections in Burundi, billed as a milestone on the country’s long road to sustainable peace, could trigger more conflict because of a combination of widespread illegal weapons and well-organized youth wings of political parties, according to analysts.

Power struggles in Burundi have provoked bouts of armed violence and civil war from independence in 1962 until the country’s last rebel group gave up and became a political party in April 2009.

According to Jean-Marie Gasana, a veteran Burundi analyst, the risks associated with the youth wings are exacerbated by the presence “of large caches of arms in the hands of civilians.

“Even more worrying is what happens should the opposition contest the outcome of the elections,” he told IRIN in Bujumbura. “We are likely to see a repeat of scenarios… where violence has ensued following flawed elections.”

“We could return to civil war,” echoed Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa, founding president of the Burundi Association for the Protection of Human Rights and Detainees.

“We have to also pay attention to the police and army, both of which have integrated former rebels into their ranks,” he added. “If there is an incident during the elections, these people could be tempted to support their original movements.”

Some of the armed, government-controlled former rebels in the capital operate outside the formal structures of the police and army, according to one human rights activist, who asked not to be named.

“The situation could become chaotic because youth [groups] have often been used during past civil wars and this is no different,” said Mbonimpa.

Some of these groups feel unfairly targeted by the authorities. Odette Ntahiraja, the secretary-general of the Mouvement pour la solidarité et la démocratie (MSD), a party registered in June 2009, told IRIN its young supporters were “often denied the right to hold demonstrations.

“Sometimes they are even arrested and some are beaten. Yet other youth groups are armed and go ahead and intimidate people without any action being taken against them,” she added.

Photo: Jane Some/IRIN

A street scene in Bujumbura, the Burundian capital: Power struggles in the country have provoked bouts of armed violence and civil war from independence in 1962

Risk of election violence

For the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies, such uneven attitudes by the authorities help to make Burundi a “classroom example of a country at potential risk of election-related violence”.

Jamila El Abdellaoui, a senior researcher in the institute’s conflict prevention programme, says another reason is the reported “[re-]arming of militias by several political parties as tools to intimidate the electorate.

“The fact that the reintegration phase of the country’s recently completed DDR [disarmament, demobilization and reintegration] process has largely failed, especially concerning those returning to urban areas, explains the availability of some former combatants to join such groups,” she argues in an October article.

Pancrace Cimpaye, spokesman for the main opposition Front pour la démocratie au Burundi (FRODEBU), said his party would not arm its young supporters but added that they would “stand up” for the people if they were targeted by the ruling party.

“Our main concern as we head to the polls is security; we urge the international community to pay more attention to this and, if possible, help in the setting-up of a special protection unit specifically for the elections,” he said.

For the European Network for Central Africa (EURAC), a Brussels-based coalition of advocacy NGOs, “The potential for violence is not yet under control” in Burundi. It cited divisions within political parties, widespread precarious living conditions, bad governance and the fact that “the rule of law is still under construction” as potential drivers of unrest.

For land conflict and human rights consultant Rene-Claude Niyonkuru, land issues are another factor: “We would be mistaken if we said there will be no violence – especially related to issues such as land. The people are frustrated, especially returnees, who are coming home in large numbers. The government had been encouraging them to return [but] it seems the same government is ill-prepared to ensure their smooth resettlement.”

He called for the mobilization of the population to address land conflicts: “Why can’t we use the election period to interrogate potential candidates on their proposals and commitment to the resolution of land disputes in the country?”

Photo: Jane Some/IRIN

Burundi could return to civil war, said Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa, president of the Association for the Protection of Human Rights and Detainees

Voluntary disarmament

Civilians across Burundi handed in thousands of guns, grenades and rounds of ammunition during a voluntary disarmament campaign in October. According to Leopold Banzubaze, deputy head of the National Disarmament Commission, more than 80,000 weapons – which Banzubaze said amounted to almost 80 percent of all the weapons in circulation – had been handed in since 2007.

Many analysts believe that despite these campaigns, there are tens of thousands of firearms still circulating in Burundi. According to the commission’s own data, fewer than 2,500 of the weapons handed in during the last phase of voluntary disarmament were rifles. The rest were grenades (10,429), bombs (218) and mines (28).

Officials in Burundi seem to be aware of the risks surrounding the polls.

“I can say there are cases of murders and other killings which are the consequences of our civil war,” Guy-Michel Mfatiye, chief of staff in the Ministry of Human Rights and Gender, told IRIN.

He added that his ministry was working with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to “sensitize the people at different levels from the regional, provincial and even to the communal level on why the elections are important and how to conduct themselves during that period”.

According to the president of the electoral commission, Pierre Claver Ndayicariye, it has established a technical committee on security and is working with the Ministry of Public Security – with the support of donor countries such as the Netherlands and Norway as well as the UN Development Programme – to build the capacity of the security forces to ensure peaceful elections.

“The issue of security is important before, during and after the elections; our message as the electoral commission to political parties is: stop rival youth groups from provoking each other, the parties are on the ground, they can stop any harmful activity by their members,” Ndayicariye said.

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GLOBAL: Food aid that gets you two for the price of one

Photo: Masoud Popalzai/IRIN

JOHANNESBURG,  – Good quality food aid can save billions of dollars that would otherwise be spent on saving lives, says a major report from the World Bank, one of two new studies that uncover some unsettling facts about food aid and malnutrition.

Spending US$200 to treat a severely malnourished child can save $1,351 in treating nutrition-related illnesses, said the report, Scaling up Intervention: What will it cost? which argued that “The cost of not intervening … is much higher. The benefits from iron fortification of staples and salt iodization alone are estimated at $7.2 billion per year.”

The 2007/2008 food price crisis, followed by one of the worst economic recessions in recent times, has revived the humanitarian aid world’s interest in malnutrition, especially in the quality of food aid being dispensed.

The other report, Malnutrition: how much is being spent? by international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), agreed with the World Bank’s conclusion in that food aid abysmally fails to meet nutrition requirements.

Food aid does not necessarily focus on the “window of opportunity” from pregnancy until a child turns two, when children and women are most vulnerable, said Meera Shekar, a leading health and nutrition specialist at the World Bank and co-author of its report.

“Rarely does the food aid target the most vulnerable groups: children under five, pregnant women and lactating mothers,” said Stéphane Doyon, a co-author of the MSF report.

Donors spent very little on nutrition – barely 1.7 percent of development and emergency food aid between 2004 and 2007 actually addressed malnutrition, said MSF.

Food aid does not necessarily focus on the “window of opportunity” from pregnancy until a child turns two, when children and women are most vulnerable

Doyon said their analysis suggested that donors should maximise the value of funding by ceasing in-kind donations and provide cash instead, allowing aid agencies to source cheaper or more appropriate food in the region or beneficiary country. However, donor countries in the European Union (EU) and Canada, which had recently moved to provide cash, were not spending enough on nutrition.

The World Bank report noted that addressing malnutrition in the 36 countries where 90 percent of the world’s most malnourished children live would be relatively cheap – only $11.8 billion to step up 13 proven nutrition interventions from current coverage to 100 percent of the target population.

Scaling up these programmes which include providing fortified food, deworming tablets and promoting breastfeeding could save the lives of more than 1.1 million children younger than five in these countries, where an estimated eight million children die of malnutrition-related causes every year.

The World Bank report takes a comprehensive look at the nuts and bolts of nutrition interventions like providing micronutrient-fortified foods, and not only details how much each intervention should be stepped up, but also its impact in monetary value.

Children who received fortified complementary food before they were three years old grew up to be more economically productive, said the World Bank study, citing an investigation led by John Hoddinott, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, in 2008.

The World Bank study represented “A careful attempt to assess what resources are needed to put a significant dent in malnutrition around the world … [the] striking feature of these estimates is, in fact, how small these financial requirements are,” Hoddinott told IRIN.

“For a fraction of the amount of money spent on bailing out financial institutions, governments around the world could significantly reduce micronutrient deficiencies and dramatically reduce the incidence of stunting.”

The global economic slowdown, combined with high food prices, has added some 100 million people around the world to those already living in chronic hunger and poverty in 2008, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Between 3.5 million and 5 million children under five years of age die every year from malnutrition-related illnesses, accounting for 11 percent of the global burden of disease, according to the reports.

The MSF study said about 40 percent of nutrition funding flows were allocated to sub-Saharan Africa, where the main recipient countries included Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Niger, Kenya, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo; almost 18 percent of the funds went to South and Central Asia; the remainder was “unspecified”.

The nuts and bolts

Of the $11.8 billion the World Bank said was needed to address malnutrition in the 36 countries, $1.5 billion could be contributed by wealthier households in the beneficiary countries to purchase iodized salt and fortified staple foods, such as flour, which were available locally.

The World Bank study found that undernutrition was surprisingly high, even among the wealthiest populations. “For example, in India, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia, respectively 20, 30, and 37 percent of children under the age of five in the highest-income quintiles are underweight.”

The remaining $10.3 billion could buy vitamin A supplements, iron-folic acid tablets, and staple foods fortified with iron, among others, for several million children and mothers.

Besides rescuing lives, these interventions could save an estimated 30 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) or years lost to premature death and disability, as well as the money needed to treat patients and provide care.

Severe acute malnutrition could be halved from the current prevalence of 19 million; an estimated 138,000 of the current 276,000 annual deaths would be averted by preventive measures; a further 50,000 deaths would be averted by treating severe acute malnutrition.

Photo: OECD DAC

Spending on nutrition has been relatively flat

The World Bank study recommended scaling up interventions in two phases: expanding the distribution of micronutrients, and educating people about eating healthy food in Phase 1; providing complementary or therapeutic foods to prevent and treat moderate malnutrition in children younger than two, and spending on resource-intensive interventions to treat severe malnutrition in Phase 2.

However, MSF’s Doyon pointed out that prevention and treatment had to run concurrently. “What’s the point in educating people about micronutrient interventions when they will have to wait to access them? “

What about the money?

The World Bank study suggested that the allocation of funds in recipient countries would be made more efficient by filling the gaps in costed and agreed-upon national strategies, and noted that this perception was growing.

In a complementing move, several developed countries, including those in the EU, have “either developed new nutrition strategies or position papers on food security, or seem poised to do so”.

“It’s about changing the mindset from providing food aid to assistance, keeping the people’s needs in mind,” said Doyon.

The authors of the World Bank report were upbeat over the recent announcement by the G8 group of industrialised countries in L’Aquila, Italy, that an additional $20 billion over three years would be spent on food security.

There is also a possibility that Canada will pursue this agenda when the G8 meets next, in 2010, by moving “from food security to nutrition security”, offering “yet another opportunity for financing the nutrition scale-up”.

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Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

LUSAKA,  – Abigail Mwanashimba has been looking after her five siblings since the age of eight, when her parents died of AIDS-related illnesses. She is now 19 years old, and without relatives to represent her at her lobola (bride price) negotiations, she was forced to hire traditional counsellors to organise the process of marriage according to the tribal customs. They did a bad job.

“I don’t know anything about my tribe or its culture because there has never been anyone to teach or show me,” she told IRIN/PlusNews. “I got very little lobola, but the last straw was the humiliation I suffered at my in-laws’ home, when I embarrassed them by performing the wrong dance.”

Losing out on the bride price was one thing, but when she realised that the counsellors she had hired had taught her the wrong traditional dances, she refused to pay them their 500,000 Zambian kwacha (US$100) fee, and is now facing a lawsuit.

Agnes Ngubeni, from the central town of Kabwe, also knows this kind of humiliation; she has lived with the embarrassment of not having undergone an initiation ceremony when she came of age, and not being able to speak the language of her tribe.

“People called us goats … they said we were ‘cultureless’ and were not educated in the ways of our tribe. It never occurred to them that there was no-one to teach us – we lived without elders,” she said.

Ngubeni and her siblings were orphaned fifteen years ago when her oldest brother was just 10. A Norwegian family living in Zambia committed itself to looking after them, which meant they were clothed and fed, but this presented them with social problems.

Their neighbours ridiculed them for eating pasta, bread and rice, instead of the staple, nshima – thick maize-meal porridge – that neither she nor her three sisters can cook.

“The neighbours laughed at us for eating the white man’s food, which they said was not real food, but what are we supposed to do? We eat what we are given. That’s just how it is,” Ngubeni said.

Ngubeni recommends that people helping child-headed families should consider placing an adult relative or any other person of the same tribe among them to guide and mentor them in the ways of traditional society.

We are so engrossed in keeping the children off drugs and alcohol, and the girls from getting pregnant … that we lsoe sight of the fact that children need to be socialised in the ways of their tribe

Out of touch with culture

In its latest report on Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) found that about 20,000 households in Zambia were led by children, but the number is increasing.

The report outlines the severe deprivations of food and shelter these children often face, and concludes that with more youngsters having to take on the responsibilities of running a household at an early age, there is every likelihood that more of them will end up on the street.

Joseph Banda heads Tisunge, a local organisation that assists child-headed households to deal with the trauma of loss, and teaches them income-generating and life skills, so that the children are able to fend for themselves and can continue their schooling.

Banda said it had never occurred to him that these children would struggle with cultural issues. “I am ashamed to say that I never saw the children’s situation in this way,” he admitted.

“We are so engrossed in keeping the children off drugs and alcohol, and the girls from getting pregnant, and making sure that they become good citizens, that we lose sight of the fact that children need to be socialised in the ways of their tribe.”

Child psychologist Trina Mayope warned that children growing up without the value of custom and tradition would have problems in future. “It’s about growing up with a cultural identity … The children feel isolation because the communities treat them as aliens, or as something not quite right because of their seeming lack of ‘traditional etiquette’.”

There is also the stigma attached to being orphaned by HIV/AIDS, as is mostly the case. “If these children don’t conform to the cultural norms of the society they live in they will suffer a double discrimination,” she noted.

Mayope acknowledged that urbanisation and the passing of time had caused people to discard many traditions, but the basics of culture were still important and largely defined how someone was perceived.

“It’s difficult for most people to comprehend how a child can grow up without knowing anything about his or culture. People think they [children] are trying to act like a muzungu [European], but when you have children whose mentor is a fellow child, how are they supposed to learn traditional norms and customs?”

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Photo: Laudes Mbon/IRIN

These mattresses have been donated to ease the refugees’ harsh conditions

 

BRAZZAVILLE, 20 November 2009 (IRIN) – Renewed clashes in northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have led to a further wave of refugees, leaving corpse-littered villages in the affected area deserted, say humanitarian officials.

About 100 people are thought to have died in clashes over fishing rights in DRC’s South Ubangi district, which lies in Equateur province. Others are believed to have drowned while crossing the Ubangi river, which separates the two Congos.

“Today we have 30,600 displaced persons. We have had a massive influx since yesterday [19 November] because of a resumption in fighting,” Rufin Mafouta, head of the NGO Médecins d’Afrique in Impfondo, the main town in the Republic of Congo’s (ROC) northern Likouala department, told IRIN.

Likouala is located about 800km north of the capital, Brazzaville.

“There was a week we had just 24,000 refugees. The number has quickly risen because of a resumption in fighting in towns and villages in the DRC,” Mafouta said.

Conditions are harsh for the refugees.

“They are exposed to the bad weather,” Mafouta said. “The sanitary conditions remain worrying. We have recorded some cases of diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections and skin diseases among the children.”

“In Eboko, we carried out an evaluation and found there are a lot of unaccompanied children. They lost their parents,” he added. “There are also many pregnant women.”

An 18 November update by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Kinshasa said four children had died of diarrhoea in Eboko.

A recent interagency mission to the South Ubangi villages of Dongo, Tangala, Ozene and Kungu found Dongo deserted, with corpses still strewn in the streets, stated the OCHA report.

Houses, shops and other property were also burned. Congolese police deployed in the area are afraid for their health.

The refugees include members of the DRC’s navy, which patrols the Ubangi.

“We have been forced to flee with our families because we neither have weapons nor ammunition [to] protect ourselves,” Wazaba Paluku, a sergeant, told IRIN in the ROC village of Dongou, where sailors had taken refuge in a police station.

About 70 percent of the refugees are women and children, 25 percent are young people, with the rest elderly persons, according to Boubacar Ben Diallo, head of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) crisis unit.

Hospitals reported receiving people with bullet and machete injuries.

DRC’s ambassador to the ROC, Esther Kirongozi, said her government had recently set up a special commission to find a lasting solution to the crisis.

DRC authorities also launched an appeal for its citizens to return home.

Aid agencies recently distributed about 15 tonnes of food and non-food items such as insecticide-treated bed nets, cooking pots, water jerry cans and blankets to the refugees in Betou, Boyele, Dongo and Impfondo following a joint UN and ROC ministry evaluation mission.

“The [donation] is inadequate but we have been forced to distribute [it], in the meantime [awaiting] other help,” noted UNHCR’s Diallo.

According to the police, some of the refugees are making their way back to their DRC villages across Ubangi River to harvest their crops before crossing back to the ROC.

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