One of the first things I noticed when I moved to Burundi was the vast array of NGOs and civil society organisations (CSOs to those in the know!) generally, and I have to admit that I was initially sceptical, fearing the ‘NGO circus’ with all the problems that brings – duplication and omission, failing to consider the real needs of the populations, internal brain drain, and so on. However, having spent longer in the country – albeit still only a fairly short time – my perspective is changing quickly. Meeting some of the dynamic Burundians I work with, and talking about the projects they work on, has brought me to the conclusion that much of Burundian civil society may be that elusive thing – a genuinely grass-roots structure that is doing hugely valuable work in promoting peace and reconciliation at a community level.

I have blogged before about the three organisations with which Survivor Corps works (AFJB, CEDAC, and THARS), their history, and the important work they do. However, as I have learnt more about the development of the conflict and the peace process in Burundi, I have become aware of the truly vital role that these and other organisations played in bringing the country to peace and ensuring that is (cross fingers) sticking (H/T Nigel Watt’s excellent book, about which I have already waxed lyrical). He describes in some detail the many organisations that have grown up at a community level to promote peace, healing, and integration.

The nature of the organisations that have done this work has varied, but perhaps the largest contingent has been religious, with religious groups forming to promote contact between ethnic groups, peer support, microfinance, mutual saving, and so on. Particularly active has been the Society of Friends (Quakers), of which David Niyonzima, the founder of THARS, is a prominent member. Many of these organisations have now broken off from their original founding church, a requirement to be registered as an NGO in Burundi, and allowing them to reach a greater constituency.

The work done by this ‘alphabet soup’ of organisations has included both ‘practical’ action such as building youth centres, providing for orphans, and organising inter-ethnic activities, as well as work also carried out by Survivor Corps’ partners such as providing vocational training, and promoting inter-ethnic income generating activities. However, perhaps even more important is the ‘mental’ aspect; promoting alternatives to violence, promoting reconciliation between ethnic groups, and helping people to discuss a shared future. CSOs, particularly religious organisations, have provided a vital service in this regard, in some cases simply by providing a space for interaction, in others by actively recruiting. Some of the most important have been the independent radio programmes, set up following recognition of the role played by Radio Mille Collines in promoting genocide in Rwanda, which aim to do the opposite, using talk shows, news, and soap operas to help people relate to their fellow Burundians and reject violence, also aiming to report accurate news and counter rumours – which, in the war years, often sparked massacres. In the course of these efforts to promote integration and equal opportunities for all, a number of organisations have also formed to try and promote the position of the Twa, and provide them with access to education and a decent footing in Burundian society for the first time.

All in all it has become clear that civil society in Burundi played an enormous part in bringing peace and is likely to be vital in promoting continuation of that peace and ethnic reconciliation in Burundi – as well as ‘traditional’ NGO motives such as promoting education, public health, and growth.

CEDAC is an umbrella organisation for former combatants’ associations led by the dynamic Eric Niragira, who founded the organisation with little more than a hope and a prayer in 2005. Although this is a period of his life about which he is reticent, Eric is himself a former combatant with the FDD, experience he brings to his work with CEDAC’s members, and after demobilisation he had the idea of founding an organisation in which former combatants from all sides could come together, promoting mutual understanding and reconciliation. Since he felt that former combatants were the most likely to restart the war, he saw this as a crucial step towards establishing peace. CEDAC now has 20,000 members across the country, working together in microfinance projects, support groups, and campaign groups, and receiving livelihoods training, something particularly important for former child soldiers, who have missed much of their schooling during the war.

Eric Niragira

Survivor Corps will be working with CEDAC on their work on Gender Based Violence, where they seek to prevent Gender Based Violence by providing healing services and support to survivors, as well as attempting to tackle its causes by educating those who spread it as a weapon of war to become advocates against it. This work has many aspects; the ubiquitous support groups and microfinance groups, as well as provision of legal assistance (in collaboration with AFJB), but also campaigns to hand in weapons, and anti-GBV campaigns targeted at men and aiming to address views of women and definitions of masculinity that contribute to GBV.

CEDAC also works on a dynamic project, in which Survivor Corps will also be partnering them, in which they are harnessing former combatants to engage with other former combatants to promote peaceful elections in 2010. It is hard to overstate the importance of this; former combatants are involved in widespread violence and banditry across the country, are often armed, and are liable to take up arms when the political struggle goes against them. Almost every Burundian I have spoken to has told me that they are afraid of what might happen during and after the elections – but that the elections remain the focus of their hopes for peace. CEDAC are working on demonstrations for peace, the first to be held this Sunday, organising public meetings of former combatants to educate them on the importance of peaceful elections, and working the Radio Publique Africaine to produce radio programmes promoting peace. Many of their members are even standing as local candidates, promising to be conciliatory and moderate in their rhetoric. In line with Survivor Corps’ traditional focus on disability rights, they will also be campaigning for accessible polling stations.

I will be contributing to Survivor Corps’ work with CEDAC by profiling Eric and several of his members, drawn from different rebel groups, as well as some of the survivors of Gender Based Violence involved with CEDAC projects, and some of the former child soldiers in CEDAC training centres. I will also be helping Eric to develop CEDAC’s web presence, and covering events such as weapons collections and the demonstration for peace.

David Niyozima, a former professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, and himself a survivor of war, whose experiences are discussed in his book ‘Unlocking Horns‘ is the director and founder of THARS, standing for Trauma, Healing and Reconciliation Services. Believing that unaddressed trauma sows the seeds for future conflict, they aim to provide a ‘holistic approach’ to pyschosocial healing and resolutions of differences. They approach this by providing counselling sessions to victims of war, including victims of torture (in which definition he explicitly includes rape, including marital rape, and domestic violence), and setting up self-help groups including different ethnicities to provide peer support, collectively save money, and invest it in microprojects. They believe that this approach can effectively address trauma, as well as fostering reconciliation and peaceful dispute resolution.

THARS was founded in 1999, and was originally linked with the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Burundi; David Niyonzima is himself a Pastor and former General Secretary of the Burundi Yearly Meeting. However, he is keen to emphasise that they are a secular organisation who help everyone, regardless of faith. They began by training community Listeners in how to listen, the stages of trauma, strategies to overcome it, and avenues of further assistance, such as further psychological help, or legal options. These Listeners went to work in ‘Listening Centres’, around the country, where people suffering from trauma could come and tell their stories. Severe cases from the Listening Centres could then be referred to specialised psychologists. These Centres were accompanied by ‘support groups’ of survivors and communities who could help those people with the slow process of overcoming trauma, as well as promoting peace and reconciliation in their districts.

THARS also works on issues to do with torture and sexual violence, providing shelter houses for women who have been raped. Here they can access medical and psychological assistance, while THARS staff work with their families to encourage them to welcome them back – without which intervention, these women often have few options and have a high risk of further assault. They receive further support while in their communities through support groups, and participation in the ‘peace through pieces’ project.

As well as practical work to aid trauma survivors, THARS has a campaign element, promoting the importance of mental health to the authorities, by advocating for its inclusion in the national health strategy. This is an issue of much importance that is far from being confined to developing countries; even in the developing world, mental health advocates complain that their problems are treated less seriously than problems of physical health. Their campaigns, using the radio, television and public meetings, also target the population at large, educating people to be aware that they need not suffer in silence, and services are available to help, and that breaking silence, for example about rape or domestic violence, can be an important means of healing, and a crucial first step in overcoming the problem. They also campaign for peaceful dispute resolution through the Alternatives to Violence Programme (AVP), pioneered in US jails, and adapted for use in a post-conflict African country. Finally, they document all of their interventions and the survivors who visit them, providing a rich source of information for those studying trauma in countries emerging from conflict, that, it may be hoped, will allow programmes such as THARS to be gradually improved and duplicated in other countries.

For anyone further interested in THARS’ work, I would strongly recommend reading the ‘stories of healing‘ section of their website. The section closes with a quote that sums up for me the importance of grass roots work:

“Often it feels as if our progress is small in comparison to the size of the problem. But we now have files full of cases where a huge difference has been made in the lives of individuals. We are beginning to see changes in the communities where we work. It is difficult work, but all of us feel good about doing it.”

Survivor Corps will be partnering THARS to train some of their survivors in Survivor Corps’ Peer-to-Peer support method. I will be assisting with this project by adding to THARS’ stock of profiles, photographs and film, aiming to link together their aims and work with that of Survivor Corps, and show how Peer-to-Peer support can complement THARS’ other interventions.

As anyone who has lived in Uganda will know, they take their religion very seriously indeed, with half the shops and businesses having religiously-oriented names – the ‘God is Great Butcher’ or the ‘Jesus Loves You Hair Salon’. After the improvement in the state of the roads, one of the big shocks of crossing the border from Uganda into Rwanda is the immediate disappearance of these names. The reason is even more distressing; the people of Rwanda turned away from religion en masse after the participation of many priests in the genocide.

Burundi lies between the two; religion is there, but not worn on their sleeves. A few shops have somewhat religious titles, but subtle, as, as I have blogged earlier, they seem keener on ‘peace’. The Catholic Church has historically been the dominant force and retains a powerful position, despite a period of repression under Bagaza (Tutsi military dictator number 2 of 3) between 1976 and 1987. However, there is also a fairly large Greek Orthodox community – the Greeks arrived en masse with the Germans, trading across the lake, and stayed through most of the 20^th Century, building a church even bigger than the Catholic Cathedral in the process. Greeks have also played a part in the country’s history; Prince Louis Rwagasore, the first Prime Minister of independent Burundi, was assassinated by a Greek settler in the pay of his political opponents. According to Pierre Claver, a fairly significant Orthodox population remains, a mixture of Greeks who have stayed throughout, and people converted over the years. His confusion at my fascination with the church also reveals how established the community is, and how it is taken for granted in Burundi – and this makes me keen to investigate whether there are similarly large populations elsewhere that I’ve somehow missed.

Orthodox church

As in Rwanda, there have been changes due to the war; the Catholic Church lost ground to various strains of evangelical Protestantism, as the conversion of Pierre Claver’s family shows. Finally, there is a small Muslim community – estimates range between 5% and 13% of the population – and there are some indications that this is growing as a result of the role played by Muslims during the war, when they showed enormous courage in protecting large numbers of Hutus and Tutsis alike. However, unlike Kigali, Bujumbura remains full of churches, and gospel music is popular. Nearly everyone I speak to tells me that things are good ‘thanks to God’, and that they hope for peace ‘with the Grace of God’ or tell me early in conversation that they are a Christian, and asks what denomination I am*.

I think this moderation is one of the things I like about the country; I found Uganda’s evangelical fervour somewhat disconcerting, and generally used to dread the occasions when it was my turn to lead the prayers at work meetings. Similarly, there is something eerie, if understandable, about Rwanda’s empty churches and mass abandonment of faith. Attributing good fortune to God, discussing religion over beers, going to church every now and then, and good-natured inquiries about others’ faith seem much more normal and healthy. It may also have positive benefits; Uganda’s first lady’s enthusiasm for promoting abstinence may be one reason for the start of a rise in HIV infection rates, while Rwanda – and Burundi in the past – showed the way in which a powerful church can become a tool for marginalisation. It may be hoped that this seeming lack of interest in mixing church and state can help Burundi to avoid either pitfall in future.

* Happily I have yet to meet an Anglican, so have yet to be invited to church. It may also be because Europeans are known for being heathens, and they’d rather not know.

There is very little about Bujumbura that looks like a country emerging from a civil war. The buildings are shiny and new, the main roads smooth, it has a snazzy new airport terminal, new buildings are going up everywhere, and the people are no different from those in any other small African city. This is fitting; Burundi has made enormous strides in the last few years, successfully integrating some rebels into the army and demobilising the rest, holding successful multiparty elections, and expanding free primary education nationwide for the first time.

Looking deeper, the impact of the war is clear. There are the physical hints; like in Northern Uganda, every other car bears the logo of an NGO or international organisation, and Burundians seem to use the word ‘Peace’ in signs for everything from supermarkets to Forex bureaus. It is also clear in the lack of development in the city; compared to other regional capitals, such as Kampala or Kigali, Bujumbura is tiny, and underdeveloped. While driving home we see people washing in the drainage ditches in the middle of the road; a sure sign of poverty. But more importantly, when people talk, they refer back to the war. Pierre Claver, the country director of Survivor Corps, who I will be working with this summer, tells me that all of his siblings abandoned the Catholic Church for Protestantism, ‘because of the war’. I share a Primus (or seven) with my hosts, Nana and Bryan, and some of their friends, and the conversation turns to the war – talk of bullets overhead, bombs landing, and arrests for breaking curfew. In the afternoon we meet General Joseph, a former rebel now working for the government on the DDR programme. I am expecting someone middle aged or older, but to my surprise he is no older than his mid-thirties; war makes young leaders. He is, however, fascinating to talk to; he tells us that they are currently working with between 33,000 and 35,000 former combatants of all ethnicities, ages and genders.

We also met Eric, director of CEDAC, an umbrella organisation for former combatants, a massively motivated man who is working for free alongside his studies, committed to promoting reconciliation between former combatants of different sides, and their victims. He talks about the need to get the two sides talking, to provide economic alternatives to violence, and about the Peaceful Elections campaign, where former combatants are trained to promote the importance of democracy and peaceful elections.

Both of these early meetings have left me profoundly optimistic about Burundi’s future, But perhaps the most hopeful sign came in the conversation with my hosts, when Bryan’s brother, who lives in Canada and who hasn’t returned to Burundi in the last ten years, told me that he has been back twice in the last two years, and is thinking of returning to Burundi with his family. Although I am aware that the situation will appear differently in rural areas, I am very much look forward to meeting some of the survivors who work with Survivor Corps and CEDAC, and helping tell some of their stories about the work they are doing to promote peace in the country.

To say that Burundi isn’t well understood would be something of an understatement. Even as a long-term Africa specialist I had to look up the capital before my interview for The Advocacy Project. So, just so everyone knows what I’m talking about….

A potted history of Burundi:

Following independece and a coup by the Tutsi-led military in 1973, ethnic tensions gradually increased, culminating in the murder of the democratically elected President in 1993. Although the coup was officially called off, the constitutional crisis took months to resolve – and just as agreement had been reached, the new president died in the same plane crash as Rwandan president Habyarimana, sparking the Rwanda genocide. These events sparked massive massacres of both Hutu and Tutsi, and a myriad of armed groups emerged in the ensuing war. Peace talks in Arusha in2000 produced agreement, but it was not until 2006 that this was fully implemented, when the final rebel group joined the peace process. Since then, demobilisation has been underway, but violence has not been eliminated. Elections are scheduled for 2010.

The country is often compared with neighbouring Rwanda; both countries have undergone decades of ethnic violence between Tutsi and Hutu – but whereas Rwanda’s civil war ended fifteen years ago, Burundi’s only came to an end in 2006, when the final rebel group agreed to join the peace agreement. While Rwanda has been flooded with aid (and it shows in the state of the roads), Burundi is still very much ‘off the map’ – something that also shows in how little it has been studied. Rwanda is seen as an important US ally in Africa, while Burundi isn’t very important to anyone. And while Rwanda’s war ended in military victory for the RPF under current president Kagame, Burundi’s ended in a negotiated peace, and the country is taking steps to restoring democracy. I’ve studied Rwanda a lot in the last few years, and I’m pretty familiar with the history and the issues there – but I know very little about Burundi. Finding out more so that I can compare the countries better is going to be part of the adventure!

Where do I fit in?

I am travelling to Burundi as a Peace Fellow for The Advocacy Project, where I will be working with Survivor Corps Burundi. Survivor Corps are active all over the world, primarily working with disability rights and on campaigns to ban specific weapons, but in Burundi they are widening their reach to work with female ex-combatants who have been victims of gender based violence. This fits in with loads of stuff I’ve studied in my degree, especially the ways in which women can be marginalised by donor communities, and the extra difficulties female ex-combatants face in reintegrating into their communities, so I’m really excited to be working with an organisation that tries to make their voices heard. I’ll be profiling some of these survivors on this blog, as well as some of the community organisations that Survivor Corps work with, and hopefully I’ll be able to tie it in with some wider issues to do with aid management, post-conflict reconstruction, and donor priorities.

Please feel free to come back or make comments; pour les gens de IHEID, ce blog est un éspace bilangue, donc les commentaires en français sont bienvenues!