All events · After the Wall

Burundi's 1993 Crisis and Civil War

1993–2005 · Sub-Saharan Africa

Displacement Mass Killing

Displaced

700,000

UNHCR's Great Lakes chronology records that some 700,000 people fled into Rwanda, Tanzania and Zaire in the weeks after the 21 October 1993 assassination. This is the best-documented single figure. Internal displacement ran alongside it throughout the war: the International Crisis Group reported roughly 350,000 people confined in army-supervised 'regroupment' camps by early 1997, and a second forced regroupment around Bujumbura in 1999–2000 affected several hundred thousand more. Cumulative displacement over 1993–2005 therefore substantially exceeds the 700,000 headline figure, but no reconciled total exists.

Share of the population affected

12%

of the population of Burundi at the time of the 1993 assassination and the crisis that followed, 1993

Killed

200,000–300,000

conflict deaths incl. combatants

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What happened

Melchior Ndadaye, Burundi's first Hutu president, was assassinated by soldiers on 21 October 1993, three months after taking office. Killings of Tutsi civilians by Hutu supporters of the ruling FRODEBU party followed in much of the countryside, and the Tutsi-dominated army conducted reprisals against Hutu. UNHCR recorded some 700,000 people fleeing to Rwanda, Tanzania and Zaire. The violence became a civil war that lasted until the 2003–05 transition, killing an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people. From February 1996 the army forcibly concentrated rural populations in guarded 'regroupment' camps, holding around 350,000 people by early 1997 according to the International Crisis Group, a policy repeated around Bujumbura in 1999–2000 and criticized by humanitarian agencies. A UN International Commission of Inquiry reported in 1996 that acts of genocide had been committed against the Tutsi minority after 21 October 1993, and also documented indiscriminate killings of Hutu by the army, gendarmerie and Tutsi civilians.

Parties

After soldiers assassinated President Melchior Ndadaye, Hutu killings of Tutsi civilians and army reprisals against Hutu drove mass flight; the army later confined rural civilians in 'regroupment' camps

Disputed

Responsibility for the assassination and the legal characterization of the ensuing killings remain disputed, with the 1996 UN commission finding acts of genocide against Tutsi while also documenting large-scale army and militia killings of Hutu.

The denominator

The 1990 census counted 5.29 million and UN estimates give about 5.9 million for 1993. In the months after President Ndadaye's assassination in October 1993 some 700,000 people fled to Tanzania, Rwanda and Zaire and several hundred thousand more were displaced internally, many into army-supervised regroupment camps that at their height in 1999-2000 held around 350,000 people; the war's death toll is usually put at about 300,000.

Where the baseline comes from

Burundian Civil War — Wikipediaopen-edited
Demographics of Burundi — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

The International Crisis Group put the toll at over 200,000 by 1998; figures of around 300,000 are commonly cited for the whole 1993–2005 war. The range reflects the absence of any systematic mortality survey, the mixing of massacre deaths with combat deaths and with war-related disease and hunger, and the difficulty of counting deaths in the regroupment camps.

Documented forms of violence

Mass KillingSummary ExecutionArbitrary DetentionDestruction of Property

Documented by the UN International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi and by the International Crisis Group, which described the destruction of dwellings and forced relocation into army-controlled camps.

Formal findings

International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi (established by UN Security Council resolution 1012) (1996) — Concluded that acts of genocide against the Tutsi minority were committed in Burundi after 21 October 1993, implicating members and local officials of the FRODEBU party, and also documented indiscriminate killings of Hutu by the army, gendarmerie and Tutsi civilians — source