Frontline peacebuilding: Women’s reconstruction initiatives in Burundi

Burundi signed a peace accord on 29 August 2000, two months before the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. Burundi is among the 185 countries that are signatories to the Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), thus committing the government to a gender-sensitive approach to peace and security. This represents a radical shift from the way politics was conducted during the five-year peace talks in Arusha, Tanzania, that denied women’s right to equal participation. But despite this act of political exclusion, women were able to carve out a space for themselves, and took part in what I define in this chapter as “frontline peacebuilding”.

Related Subject(s): Human Rights and Refugees

Countries: Burundi