Burundi has lifted a midnight to dawn curfew that has been in place for 34 years, saying the country is stable. A new government was elected last year following a civil war that killed an estimated 300,000 people. The curfew was used by the government in the 1970s - dominated by a Tutsi minority - to try to maintain control. But the country soon spiralled into chaos - as Hutu rebel groups took up arms against increasingly brutal repression by the military. The curfew remained in force for the next three decades - with Burundians prohibited from venturing on to the streets between midnight and dawn. Now the government says these restrictions are no longer necessary.

The Burundian government will expel all Rwandan asylum seekers who fail to meet conditions for their acceptance as refugees, Interior Minister Evariste Ndayishimiye has said. Burundi's northern provinces currently host at least 19,000 Rwandan asylum seekers. The Rwandans started arriving in Burundi in April 2005 - mainly from the province of Butare. They said they were fleeing prosecution under Rwanda's traditional justice system known as gacaca.

Officials from the United Nations and the Burundian government have agreed to terms for setting up two postconflict institutions - one for reconciliation and the other for justice - but opposition leaders have questioned the proposed bodies’ objectivity. A UN delegation from New York met government officials from 26-31 March, after which they issued a joint communiqué announcing the framework for both a truth and reconciliation commission and a special court for prosecuting crimes against humanity committed in Burundi since it gained independence from Belgium in 1962.

Some 12,000 Burundians who fled a food crisis caused by a prevailing drought in their country have returned home from neighbouring Tanzania, the governor of Burundi's eastern province of Ruyigi has said. Governor Moise Bucumi denied allegations that they had been forced or threatened to return home. "I received reports that they came voluntarily, and I have no reason to doubt them," he said, adding that Tanzania had no reason to force them out, either. "What interest did it have?" he asked.

Three Burundian ministers representing the Front pour la democratie au Burundi (FRODEBU) in President Pierre Nkurunziza's government reported to work on Monday despite a directive by their party to pull out of government. Health Minister Barnabe Mbonimpa, Agriculture Minister Elie Buzoya and Environment Minister Odette Kayitesi have reportedly refused to comply with FRODEBU's directive to boycott their duties.

Burundi has freed a final batch of 1,846 political prisoners, including some accused of involvement in ethnic massacres and the assassination of the president in 1993. Human rights activists, including the largest group Ligue Iteka, said they wanted the constitutional court to cancel the releases arguing it was against Burundi's constitution and international law to free detainees charged with murder. Some 1,453 prisoners were released in January and February as part of a plan by President Pierre Nkurunziza to free all prisoners accused of politically-motivated crimes during the tiny central African nation's civil war.

Most of the children who come back to Burundi after spending years attending classes in refugee camps in Tanzania know no other school. But policies enacted by their government mean that those returning do not feel out of place in Burundian schools. Reintegration of repatriated schoolchildren into the school system of their country of origin has been made much easier by the decision in 2000 to harmonise classes given at primary and secondary level both in camps for Burundian refugees in Tanzania and in Burundian schools.

In Burundi, when the political situation improved, "with the successful democratic elections" that culminated in the August presidential poll, returnees increased; reaching 44,385 from July to October 2005, with a 16,000 peak in August alone. However, a drop occurred from November to December, with only 6,611 returnees in the two months. This, UNHCR said, was mainly due to the activities of the rebel Forces nationales de liberation (FNL). Poor socioeconomic conditions, particularly food shortages in some regions, also contributed to the decline.

A Burundian human rights group has criticised the provisional release of 673 prisoners involved in the 1993 killing of the country's first democratically elected president and the ethnic reprisals it triggered. Human rights watchdog Ligue Iteka said the authorities' decision this week to free hundreds of detainees charged with political assassination, murder and breaching state security undermined Burundi's reconciliation efforts.

International Alert has been implementing a peacebuilding programme in the Great Lakes region for over 10 years, and is seeking a new Programme Manager. You will be based in Burundi, from where you will lead a team of around a dozen expatriate and local staff, implementing conflict transformation programmes in the DRC, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. We are looking for an experienced Manager from within the NGO sector, with at least five years' experience of conflict-related programming, strong at team leadership, with a strategic mindset and a proven ability to design projects and raise funds.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, is expanding a transit site at Musasa in northern Burundi to accommodate thousands of Rwandans seeking refuge in the country, an agency official said on Friday (January 6). Some 2,000 people have arrived in the northern provinces of Ngozi, Muyinga and Kirundo since December 2005, bringing the number of Rwandan asylum seekers in Burundi to an estimated 8,000, said Didier Bukuru, the UNHCR information officer in the capital, Bujumbura.

The United Nations Operation in Burundi (ONUB) is funding nearly a dozen new initiatives aimed at boosting education and health across eight provinces in the country, which is stabilizing despite continued rebel activities. Known as “Quick Impact Projects,” these small-scale endeavours serve to build peace at the grass-roots level. The new projects recently announced by ONUB involve rehabilitating primary schools, constructing new classrooms and sanitation systems, refurbishing college facilities, stocking libraries, and the installation of a water supply system at the Nyakabugu Health Centre.

On a routine repatriation day in the Ngara District of northwestern Tanzania, convoys organised by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, lined up to take Burundi refugees home. An 11-year-old boy stood crying next to one of the trucks. Momentarily, there was a flurry of activity as UNHCR officials tried to verify that the boy had not been left behind. He had not. Still crying, the boy explained that he was sad because his "family" was leaving. Even though he was staying at the camp with his biological mother, he was heartbroken that another family he had considered his own was returning to Burundi without him.

The African Development Bank (ADB) Group said Burundi had met the conditions needed to qualify for US $226.01 million ($149.35 million in Net Present Value terms) in debt relief. "This amount will save up to 90 percent of Burundi's debt service obligations annually until February 2043," the bank said in a statement following a decision by its board of directors and those of the African Development Fund, one of the bank's entities. The ADB share of debt relief is equivalent to 18 percent of the relief being offered by all of Burundi's creditors, according to AlertNet.

This commentary from an Eldis Editor looks at how the President of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza, has taken the brave step of dropping fees for primary school, thereby making access to primary education easier for many children in the country. But what about the education sector's ability to cope with a sudden increase in demand for education? Are there enough teachers? Is there enough money? And, as the student to teacher ratio will inevitably increase, what happens to the quality of education these children will receive?

The purpose of the job is to lead and develop Concern’s Education programme in Cibitoke. This is a two year contract and the applicant must be fluent in French.

Twenty-one members of a new commission began its work on Tuesday (November 15) to identify all Burundi political prisoners being held throughout the country. The commission will "determine who are political prisoners and provide a complete list", the nation's first vice-president, Martin Nduwimana, said during the commission's launch. The commissioners, who are mostly magistrates and lawyers, are to work in four subcommissions to cover the four provinces of Bujumbura, Ngozi, Bururi and Gitega regions, which each host the nation's main prisons.

Source: Alertnet

Three militias in eastern Congo are plotting a joint attack on Burundi and Rwanda, Burundi's army said on Monday as it prepared to welcome U.N. Security Council officials touring Africa's troubled Great Lakes region. Major Adolphe Manirakiza said the plans were revealed by a fighter from Rwanda's ethnic Hutu rebels, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), who was captured on Sunday on Burundi's border with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The election of a new government in Burundi has not brought an end to human rights violations by all sides in the country’s brutal civil war, Human Rights Watch has announced. Human Rights Watch has documented torture and summary executions in the ongoing war in a new report, “Burundi: Missteps at a Crucial Moment.” “The armed conflict in Burundi is no excuse for torture and summary execution,” said Alison Des Forges, senior adviser to the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. “The government and the rebels alike must abide by their obligations under international law to treat anyone in their custody humanely.”

Truck after truck rumbles over the border at the dusty frontier town of Mugano, each crammed with Burundian refugees returning from Tanzania. For the 464 people in this latest repatriation convoy, it’s a bitter-sweet homecoming. Joy at leaving the crowded refugee camps in eastern Tanzania is tempered by trepidation over starting anew in their former communities – communities they fled to escape rape and massacre. But many also come home to discover their land has been occupied by former neighbours or the government.The land problem may be the most combustible issue facing the new government headed by former Hutu rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza.