At the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, in October 2021, the Council established a special procedure on Burundi. The new Special Rapporteur mandate includes critical monitoring, reporting, and technical advice components. The Council’s decision to discontinue the mandate of the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) at the same time ended the only international…
Amnesty International welcomes the Special Rapporteur’s update on the human rights situation in Burundi. Burundi continues to face serious human rights challenges despite promises by Burundian authorities to improve the human rights situation since President Evariste Ndayishimiye took over as head of state in June 2020. Despite these significant challenges, Burundian officials continue to reject…
We, the undersigned human rights non-governmental organizations, call on you, in your capacity as Minister of Justice, to implement without further delay the court decisions granting provisional release to Christa Kaneza. The failure to implement the court decision is an affront to the rule of law and amounts to a violation of her right to…
Six international human rights groups – Amnesty International, the Burundi Human Rights Initiative, DefendDefenders (East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project), Human Rights Watch, Protection International Africa and TRIAL International – condemned the decision of the Court of Appeal of Ngozi on 29 September to uphold the conviction and five-year prison sentence of…
Amnesty International thanks the Commission of Inquiry for its vital work since 2016. As the continuing grave violations it has documented demonstrate, a handful of symbolic gestures cannot compensate for the deeper, more durable reforms required to meaningfully improve the human rights situation in Burundi. We warmly welcome the release of human rights defender Germain…
At the 45th session of the UN Human Rights Council (the Council) in October 2020, the Council renewed the mandate of the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on Burundi for a further year. This allowed the only independent mechanism mandated to document human rights violations and abuses, monitor, and publicly report on the situation in Burundi…
Burundian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release lawyer Tony Germain Nkina, who was sentenced to five years in prison in June 2021 in all likelihood because of his past human rights work, six international human rights groups said today. The groups – Amnesty International, the Burundi Human Rights Initiative, DefendDefenders (East and Horn of Africa…
We, the undersigned organisations, express our dismay that the Burundian Appeals Court of Ntahangwa has not yet announced a verdict in the case of human rights defender Mr. Germain Rukuki. According to legal statutes, this verdict was due within 30 days of the appeal hearing, by 24 April 2021. This undue delay adds to the…
During Amnesty International’s global Write for Rights campaign, our members and supporters in 37 countries took more than 436,292 actions in solidarity with Burundian human rights defender Germain Rukuki and called for his immediate and unconditional release. These letters have been sent by Amnesty International’s national sections and offices to Burundian embassies in their countries…
Amnesty International thanks the Commission of Inquiry for its oral update. While the government has taken some steps towards reopening media space, human rights defenders and journalists continue to face serious violations of their rights. In December 2020, we received the welcome news that four journalists from Iwacu Press Group – arrested and convicted simply…
In response to the Questionnaire of the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants on “pushback practices and their impact on the human rights of migrants”, This is Amnesty International’s submission on select patterns of unlawful pushbacks of migrants and refugees in East Africa region.
In this statement, delivered at the 67th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (virtual), Amnesty International calls on the African Commission to: (1) call on the Burundian government to immediately and unconditionally release Germain Rukuki and all other human rights defenders and journalists imprisoned solely for the peaceful exercise of…