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VOT Country Programs: Burundi
Initiative to Mitigate Acts of Torture and Strengthen Support to Victims
Implementing Partners: Search for Common Ground, Quaker Church, Ligue ITEKA, International Human Rights Law
Group
Funding Period: One year
Amount: $1,200,000
Purpose: Address and mitigate acts of torture and violence and strengthen the ability of communities and
victims to respond and cope.
Objectives:
- Expand counseling and treatment centers for women and their children who have been victimized
by conflict.
- Strengthen community response, linkages, and advocacy through independent radio broadcasting
nationwide and across borders to Burundian refugees.
- Expand psychosocial trauma healing through new counseling and treatment
centers.
- Broaden a campaign of raising awareness of the brutality of torture, improve documentation and
promulgation of cases of abuse, and extend judicial advice and assistance
to victims of torture.
- Extend services through mobile legal outreach clinics for victims seeking
legl recourse for
violations.
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War and endemic violence have plagued Burundi since 1962. The country is mired in an
escalating socio-economic crisis that continues to be fueled by eights years of instability following
the assassination of the first democratically elected president in 1993. Nearly a million people
who suffered extreme trauma and abuse have been displaced by the conflict, unable to return to
their communities of origin. Even with the signature of the Arusha Peace Accords and installation
of the transitional government during the later half of 2000, two rebel groups remain outside the
peace process, leading to further insecurity and abuse.
Human rights violations continue on a daily basis. Whether perpetrated by the army, civil militias
or rebel groups, violations of the penal code with impunity persist. The Victims of Torture
Fund-supported initiative draws on the expertise and presence of several implementing partners in
Burundi. Together they are providing services to torture survivors and building a community
response to the pervasive incidence of violence and abuse.
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