Burundi programme 2017 BURUNDI’S POLITICAL BACKGROUND Burundi has witnessed decades of violent civil conflict between ethnic groups. Despite the fact that a peace process has made democratic transition possible, strong political distrust and a lack of inclusive dialogue between different groups continue to pose significant challenges. THE APPROACH OF NIMD IN BURUNDI NIMD started to work in Burundi in 2008. The implementing partner organization in Burundi is ‘The Burundi Leadership Training Programme (BLTP)’. In the run up to the 2010 elections, NIMD and BLTP worked on getting the political parties to talk to each other and develop themselves as democratic parties. However, since the 2010 elections – which many opposition parties boycotted – Burundi has experienced several years of serious political deadlock, including a period when the different parties would not meet each other and several opposition leaders lived in exile. In 2013 and 2014, as part of a strategy for unlocking this political deadlock, NIMD and BLTP managed to engage the main 13 political parties in an 18-month capacity building project. This was a series of training sessions on how to develop a political party programme, including topics such as how to write a programme, how to develop policy positions and how to involve members in the provinces in such a process. These were multiparty training sessions so representatives of all the main 13 political parties attended the programme together. So at the same time as providing training on very useful technical information and skills, it was also a significant move towards building trust between the parties. In addition to the different multiparty trainings, NIMD also facilitated the process of parties holding internal party discussions, including consulting with their members in several provinces, and helped them to translate these discussions into policy positions on key issues. 2014 saw the last 6 months of this project and the start of a second project focusing on helping the parties to prepare for participating in the elections in 2015. This consisted of training sessions on topics such as how to select candidates, how to observe elections, how to work within the new electoral legislative framework and how to develop communication strategies for getting messages across to the electorate. These activities were executed both in the capital as well as in provinces esteemed to be potentially risky during elections. NIMD and BLTP also arranged for the independent electoral commission to participate in some of these sessions to enable them to exchange information with the political parties and to increase trust in the management of the electoral process. Democracy Schools Since 2011, NIMD and BLTP have also been running democracy schools in Burundi. The school programme started in two provinces and was aimed at training community leaders in democratic knowledge and skills. Currently, there are schools in 8 provinces. We constantly work on furthering developing the set up of the schools and the curriculum. For instance, the training modules now also address security problems because that is an important issue in Burundi at the moment. This means that the schools are now also open to policemen.   Programme deviations/ToC update: The political crisis that started in 2015, continued in 2016. The nature of political violence changed from popular protests and clashes between protesters and security forces to targeted assassinations of high profile politicians and security officials, extra judicial killings, kidnappings and disappearances. The ruling party has increasingly consolidated its monopoly on power and state institutions. Political space for opposition parties to operate in the country became extremely limited. The Ministry of Home Affairs, charged with the management of political parties, continued the practice of splitting up political parties, creating government controlled versions of opposition parties and denouncing the original. Opposition parties have either seen their leadership assassinated, forced to flee of the country, or unable to organize functionally operating party structures. The exiled leaders of key opposition parties continued to be organised CNARED, a opposition coordination mechanism through which they aim to be recognised and effectively participate in the internationally mediated dialogue process on the Burundi crisis. Due to its composition CNARED remained an unacceptable counterparty for the Burundian government, as they accuse key members of its leadership to have been involved in the attempted coup d’etat of May 2015. The pluriform composition of CNARED also remained a source for internal frictions which further hampered its effectiveness as an opposition platform. 

There have been little indications that the consultations facilitated by former President of Tanzania Mkapa under the auspices of the East African Community have produced a dialogue that will resolve the crisis. In part, this was caused by the hostile position of the ruling party, but the weak and divided opposition also played a role and the absence of sufficient coherent political front of the Heads of State in the EAC region formed a further explanatory factor. The efforts of the UN to support this process and new resolutions of the UN Security Council have also been met with outright refusal and condemnation from the Government of Burundi. In the meantime the Government of Burundi has pushed forward its own internal Burundian consultation process led by the National Commission for Inter-Burundian Dialogue (CNDI). This has been seen as a way to produce pre-determined conclusions that will endorse the position of the ruling party and could pave the way for constitutional amendments that will remove presidential term limits, ethnic quota linked to the Arusha peace agreement and enable further reforms that will negatively impact on political space. While a constitutional revision has not yet taken place, several  laws were passed and CSOs were banned that has already significantly reduced the democratic and civil space. These processes are expected to continue in the following year. 

A solution or breakthrough from one of the (international) dialogue attempts has failed to take place. At the same time, Nkurunziza’s position has not been substantially challenged by newly formed armed opposition groups, among other reasons because they did not have sufficient capacity to sustain an armed rebellion. 

Throughout the year, there have been speculations that internal divisions within the ruling party and security forces could lead to a challenge to the President’s power from within, but given the failed coup attempt in 2015 it is difficult to assess if this was a realistic scenario at any point during 2016. The threat of rapid deterioration into widespread political and ethnic violence in this case, which could have been the trigger for an international peacekeeping intervention, has not fully vanished at any point of the year. The year 2016 as such, closed with almost as much uncertainty as it started. A continuation of the current political deadlock therefore also presents itself as a likely scenario for (the first part of) 2017. Political actors are defined as the combined main target group of the Strategic Partnership: - (representatives of) political parties - politicians - (Members of) Parliament and its Committees - Other elected representatives at local levels. NIMD will primarily focus on political parties.