Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, I am.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you very much, and thanks for this opportunity to talk about Burundi. I very much welcome this session, especially as Burundi has been slipping away from the international headlines, despite the fact that the crisis is becoming more and more entrenched. By way of introduct

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Okay, thank you. As many of you probably know, what we call the current crisis in Burundi began in April 2015, and it was triggered by the decision of President Pierre Nkurunziza to stand for a third term in the elections, which was seen by many Burundians as being against the s

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Burundi is one of the few countries in this part of Africa to have a vibrant independent media and a very dynamic independent civil society movement, despite many years of repression and war, even before the current crisis. Unfortunately, all of that is finished now, because one

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The short answer is no, sadly. On the contrary, the response of the Burundian government to the UN investigation team's report has been, once again, a categorical denial of the gravity of the human rights crisis in the country. You may have followed the intervention of the Buru

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, we do. I work on Rwanda as well as Burundi, so I'm sensitive to that, as we all are. It's a complicated situation. Many of the Burundians who fled last year ended up in Rwanda. It's one of the closest and easiest places to go, not so much now, because they're actually tryin

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I certainly share your concerns. As I mentioned earlier, the International Criminal Court, whenever it's finished its preliminary examination, will make, we hope, some sort of conclusion on or assessment of whether these crimes constitute crimes against humanity. We certainly b

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Of course, and I'm not implying that it was your case, but it's maybe worth saying a word about that. In terms of the current crisis in Burundi, I see it primarily as a political crisis rather than an ethnic crisis, unlike the situation that prevailed in Burundi in the 1990s, as

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  In view of the gravity of the situation in Burundi, I would say that even governments like Canada's, which may not be major players in that region, still have a role to play in supporting and strengthening mechanisms, which could ultimately deliver justice, and in supporting init

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Certainly, because of the very high rates of unemployment, it's easy for anyone who may want to do so to just pay young people to go out and do whatever they want them to do. That is definitely going on. This is in the context of a disastrous economic situation. I didn't mention

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  It was fairly limited. Even the mining sector is not hugely developed. The main mineral there is not so much coltan actually, but nickel, but even that has not been fully exploited yet. I believe there were some companies that were starting to look at that. The other industry is

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  It was an election to some extent I suppose we could say, but by the time the elections took place, almost all the opposition leaders had fled, so there was practically no competition. There are a number of parties that we could describe almost as satellite parties to the rulin

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The youth are victims and are manipulated by both sides. On the government side, you have youth who are part of the official youth league of the ruling party. Those are the ones I talked about before. On the opposition side, there are many young men, as well as women, but parti

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I wouldn't say they're headquartering in Congo. I wouldn't really say they're headquartering anywhere, but if they are, the most likely place is probably Rwanda. The opposition, I'm talking about armed opposition now, is fragmented, quite divided internally, and apparently disorg

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I couldn't comment on the details because it's obviously confidential, and I genuinely don't know how much progress they've made. It's not an investigation as such, so they're not going in-depth, looking for witnesses, and so on, at this stage. There's a lot of information, of c