Publication

This report takes stock of the escalating violence and the armed opposition that has developed in Burundi since mid-2015. The text’s authors contend that this unfolding crisis is the most serious one since the transformation of the National Forces for Liberation (FNL) from an armed group into a political actor in 2009, which marked the end of full-scale war in Burundi. However, the authors further suggest that the evolution of the present crisis is by no means unique in Burundian history, either in the scale of the violence or the modes of repression. In fact, since the end of the country’s political transition, Burundi’s political and security trajectory has continued to exhibit the cyclical patterns of repression and political violence that have plagued the country since independence.