The Youth Program Manager’s primary role is to reinforce the quality of the youth program across the Country Program in line with the IRC Program Framework, the Programming Principles and the Country Strategic Plan, and to strengthen the capacity of IRC Burundi youth staff. The Manager ensures the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the UAM program. He/she is in charge of writing donor reports and of budget management of ongoing grants.

Human rights violations, including executions by armed bandits and sexual violence against women and children, have continued in Burundi despite an improvement in the political landscape, a national watchdog has said. At the launch of its annual report, Jean-Marie Vianey Kavumbagu, head of the Burundi human rights group, ITEKA [Ligue Burundaise des Droits de l'Homme], said the inauguration of the government in 2005 should have helped to improve the situation.

1,000 Burundians, including 800 refugee returnees, have moved into new housing built for them with funding from the UN refugee agency in the village of Gatere near the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz has pressed Burundi’s leader to crack down on corruption and reduce red tape to speed the recovery from a 13-year civil war. The cost of opening a business, at twice the average income, curbed economic growth, Wolfowitz told Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza when they met this week.

AIDS activists in Burundi are up in arms over a nationwide shortage of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, and are demanding immediate action from the government. Health workers said delays in the government's procurement process had caused the shortages.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, is urging HIV-positive Burundian refugees in camps in neighbouring Tanzania to return home, where they will have better access to treatment and care.

The World Food Program (WFP) and non-governmental organisations have warned that two million people hit by recent floods in Burundi need urgent assistance until June to avert a food crisis. This follows last week’s joint appeal for US$132 million by UN agencies and NGOs for their work in Burundi during 2007.

Burundi's Supreme Court has sentenced two people to jail terms ranging from 15 to 20 years and acquitted four others, including former President Domitien Ndayizeye, over charges of plotting a coup.

Heavy rains pounding Burundi's capital and outlying areas have killed at least four people and left about 23 000 homeless since the downpours began last month, officials have said. They said the situation was "catastrophic" after the floods destroyed farmlands, sparking fears of food shortages and disease outbreaks in the tiny Central African nation emerging from more than a decade of civil strife.

When the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission meets with representatives of the Burundian government tomorrow, this new UN body designed to promote recovery for countries after armed conflicts should emphasize the crucial need for human rights protection in Burundi, Human Rights Watch said today (11 December 2006).

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today (28 November 2006) condemned the jailing and harassment of journalists by the Burundi government in an apparent reaction to broadcasts that suggested a failed coup attempt was actually staged by the government.

Following historical general elections in Sweden in the last week of September that brought the centre-right "Alliance for Sweden" to power, the new Prime Minister, Mr Fredrik Reinfeldt, announced his Cabinet on Friday, October 6, a day after he was elected by Parliament.

The government of Burundi must bring to justice members of the national intelligence service (SNR) at all levels of the chain of command responsible for serious rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a report released October 25th. Over the past year, SNR agents have been implicated in at least 38 extrajudicial executions and more than 200 arbitrary arrests, some involving torture.

Health officials in Burundi have moved to control an outbreak of cholera in the capital, Bujumbura, and the surrounding Bujumbura Rural Province, where a total of 90 cases of the disease have been recorded, an official said on Tuesday. The Health Ministry has launched a campaign to spray households of those affected in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the ongoing campaign of intimidation by the authorities in Burundi against radio stations that have cast doubt on a government claim to have uncovered a coup plot. The State Prosecutor questioned three journalists from three independent stations about their sources for a story broadcast at the end of August, according to local journalists.

Burundian state hospitals routinely detain patients who are unable to pay their hospital bills, Human Rights Watch and the Burundian Association for the Protection of Human Rights and Detained Persons said in a new report released. The patients can be detained for weeks or even months in abysmal conditions.

Residents of two Burundian provinces that are strongholds of the Forces nationales de libération (FNL) rebel group, which has agreed a ceasefire with the government, have expressed concern over continued ‘taxation’ by the rebels. The residents are also worried that the FNL is recruiting civilians to its ranks "as potential beneficiaries of demobilisation fees".

Reporters Without Borders has voiced "deep concern about the future of democracy in Burundi" after Aloys Kabura, the state-owned Agence Burundaise de Presse's correspondent in the northern city of Kayanza, was sentenced on 18 September 2006 by a court in Ngozi to five months in prison for "rebellion" and "defamatory statements."

Software Freedom Day is a day set aside to celebrate the benefits and virtues of free and open source software. Globally free software enthusiasts arrange events, demonstrations, carnivals and conferences in celebration. For some, like those in South Africa, the events are usually well attended and popular. But for many the challenges of spreading the free software ideals are a lot more difficult. In Burundi, a small landlocked nation in the heart of Africa nestled between Rwanda, Tanzania and Lake Tanganyika, software is not an issue high on very many people's agenda.

Burundi's second vice president, Alice Nzomukunda, resigned on Tuesday in protest at interference by the chairman of the ruling party. "The government's hands are tied by [the chairman] Hussein Radjabu," Nzomukunda said at a news conference in the capital, Bujumbura. Alice Nzomukunda was Burundi's second highest ranking official in the ruling party.