Chapter 3 - Transitional Justice Law and Practice in Response to the Full Legacy of Large-Scale Human Rights Abuses, During and Beyond the Burundian Peace Process

Summary

Burundi's transitional justice response to the five sets of events is intimately linked to the peace process it has gone through. This Chapter will therefore, firstly, briefly summarise the peace process and the subsequent peace agreements. Next, a general presentation will be made on how the overall issue of dealing with the past is included in the agreements. This also includes a summary of substantive references to Burundi's past. While not the outcome of a typical truth telling process, involving a wide range of societal actors, these substantive statements about Burundi's past, about the nature of the violence it has lived through and about the need to deal with the past constitute in themselves an important acquis of the peace process. This Chapter is structured along the lines of the four above-mentioned objectives of transitional justice: truth, accountability, reparation and reconciliation. This structure is obviously somewhat artificial, since some of the policy measures and institutional mechanisms put forward may not be exclusively related to just one or any of these objectives. This chapter also analyses the negotiations process between the UN and the Government of Burundi on the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms. This process has its roots in the Arusha Agreement and was more directly prompted by UN SC Resolution 1606 of 20 June 2005. At the time of completion of this research, as of December 2009, this negotiations process remained de facto suspended.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE BURUNDIAN PEACE PROCESS AND PEACE AGREEMENTS

Burundi's peace process is not in itself the subject of analysis of this research. However, the linkages between the peace process and transitional justice in Burundi are important and manifold. The question how to deal with Burundi’s legacy of large scale human rights abuses has been a constant and prominent aspect during all of the peace process, between June 1998 and September 2006. For instance, the issue of “political prisoners” (see Section 3.4.4) was put forward as a condition for its participation in the Arusha negotiations process by the CNDD-FDD. Conversely, the way the issue of transitional justice was dealt with has undoubtedly shaped the transition from war to peace in Burundi. For instance, the enactment of legislation to give effect to the agreement on provisional immunity for FNL members and the release of FNL supporters (see Section 3.4.2) constituted two major stumbling blocks for the early implementation of the agreement with the Palipehutu-FNL.