In 2024, as part of the Children of War project, I visited Burundi to conduct oral history interviews and archival research. With the first interviews, it became clear that, nearly twenty years after the end of the civil war (1993-2005), the knowledge and memories of child soldiering in Burundi had slowly receded. For several key informants, including a political scientist and the coordinator of a prominent child protection organisation, child soldiering was no longer a problem in Burundi. It was presented as a past phenomenon mainly developed during the Burundian civil war. For many, the issue had disappeared with the post-conflict Disarmament Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes in the 2000s. In 2024, child soldiering was thus seen as having little relevance in today’s Burundi: it was not a priority in the issues affecting Burundian children. For the coordinator of the largest network of children’s rights organisations, the main problems that they dealt with were violence against children, children living in the streets and human trafficking.
Knowledge about child soldiering in Burundi before the civil war is scarce. For instance, whether children were involved at any level in the various ethnic massacres that took place in Burundi remains to be researched. A report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, examining the massacres/ genocide of Hutu in 1972, maintains that some students in secondary schools were responsible for identifying students considered as ‘Hutu’, who would then be arrested by the military. Although it has been widely reported that some members of the Jeunesse Révolutionnaire Rwagasore (JRR), the youth wing of the party-state Union pour le Progrès National (UPRONA), participated in the repression against Hutu in 1972, they are generally believed to have included young adults who were over 18 years old. The discussions during my research in Burundi also raised the question of who is included or not in the category of ‘child’, which will be explored in future publications.
This lack of memory needs to be understood within the broader context of the contested histories and narratives amongst Burundians around the origins, developments and consequences of the various ethnic massacres and conflicts that the country has experienced since 1962. The Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement, which officially ended the civil war in Burundi in 2005, had provisions for the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), intending to shed light and establish the ‘truth’ about violent events that the country faced since the colonial era. However, there were delays in creating the TRC, and some observers have criticised its work and findings as partial.
Even when looking at more recent events, such as the 1993-2005 civil war, knowledge and public memory of child soldiering is slowly disappearing. There is a lack of reliable quantitative data about child soldiers in Burundi. The difficulty of remembering is compounded by the disappearance of local NGOs who were involved in issues pertaining to child soldiering in Burundi. As in many other post-conflict countries, the continuing existence of NGOs depends on external funding, and when the funding ends, NGOs often adapt by shifting focus, or some even cease work. Understanding the patterns of recruitment of children in the past, however, can contribute to the prevention of child soldiering in future, making the Children of War research timely.
As I write this blog, the M23 rebel group has captured the city of Goma (DRC) since January 27th, 2025. There is a risk of the conflict spreading throughout the DRC and spilling over to neighbouring countries, including Burundi. Burundi has troops in the DRC, and they are now involved, alongside the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC), in countering and preventing the progress of the M23. The intensification of the conflict in eastern DRC increases the risk of child soldiering throughout the region, as has happened in the past. Given the transnational dimension of the conflicts in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, children could be recruited and fight beyond their national boundaries, as in the past. For instance, in 2004, Amnesty International reported that Burundian children had fought in their country during the civil war and in the DRC. With the continuing politicisation of young people in Burundi (see: Ibiswi vy’inkona blog), there is a need to shed light on the use of children in conflicts in Burundi and its neighbours so that lessons can be learned from the past to avoid present and future violations of children’s rights.
By Pamela Nzabampema