By April Kent

Photo Credit: "Clashes in Burundi" by REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic 

is licensed under CC Commercial 2.0. 

On February 15, European Union foreign ministers released a statement that they were prepared to strengthen economic sanctions on Burundi following the failure of peace talks with opposition leaders: “The EU... stands ready to impose restrictive measures against those whose actions might have led or might lead to acts of violence and repression (and) serious human rights violations.”

The United Nations has repeatedly warned that the situation in Burundi has serious genocidal overtones, “catapulting the country back to the past” more than a decade after the civil war between Hutus and Tutsis in which tens of thousands were killed. As a result of the current political crisis, at least 400 people have already been killed and 220,000 have fled to neighboring countries.

The conflict erupted on April 25, 2015, when the ruling political party in Burundi announced that the incumbent President of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza, would run for a third term in the upcoming election. The announcement sparked protests by those opposed to Nkurunziza seeking an unconstitutional third term in office, setting off widespread demonstrations in the capital. In January 2016, Amnesty International published satellite images it believed to portray mass graves where killings took place. That same month, the African Union announced a plan to send 5,000 peacekeepers to Burundi, but the plan was shelved after President Nkurunziza declared a military intervention “too early.”

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April 19, 2016

By Megan Abbot

Libyans are frustrated with the slow pace of the UN-sponsored peace talks and are calling for further international assistance to support the country’s reconstruction efforts. The uprising against Qaddafi in 2011 united many different factions against the dictatorship, but the country has since devolved into civil war. Carlotta Gall reports for the New York Times that ordinary Libyans are frustrated by the government’s lack of progress toward peace-building, and that the process of constructing a new constitution during the civil war has been daunting. Warring factions have forced many people to flee Tripoli and Benghazi and to become refugees in Tunisia. 

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October 05, 2015