Burundi

The media coverage of the project helped remind stakeholders of the importance of maintaining peace in order to hold free, peaceful and reassuring elections. Media coverage on the concerns of citizens regarding security issues and on whether or not their aspirations and hopes regarding the electoral programmes would be taken into account, allowed the grantee to bring grassroots populations closer to political decision makers in Burundi and reinforce its strategy for advocacy.

In view of the time and the human resources which were allocated to this project, it would have been important for the grantee to adjust the number of planned activities and to focus on a coherent, qualitative process, within which the activities would have complemented one another. Similarly the activities should have been implemented in such a way to establish a clearer relationship between national and local level.

The grantee was unaware of the impact the political parties have on the alleged independence of candidates, representatives and leaders in the administration. The evaluation revealed that the true impact of women leaders within the political parties relied mainly on co-operation and loyalty to leading figures.

The theoretical content of the training sessions, which were carried out almost exclusively in French even though women in rural zones rarely speak anything other than Kirundi, meant that the needs of the beneficiaries could not be efficiently met.

The project created a critical mass of well-trained people, who in turn helped civil society, government and international organizations to increase their work on transitional justice in Burundi.

The project strategy did not fully consider how the grantee’s intervention would be received by government stakeholders. The grantee had built a positive record with civil society and the UN mission based on earlier training and technical advice and on the grantee’s international credibility. However they did not have a similar record with the government officials that were to lead the National Consultation Steering Committee and its technical advisory team. The credibility that the grantee built with the police through the implementation of the census project did not translate into an open door at the National Consultation Steering Committee.

There was no explicit commitment on the part of the partners to achieving the project’s objective and results - as opposed to implementing the activities - and no formal agreement on operational standards. A formal Memorandum of Understanding between the three partners would have helped ensure more consistent implementation and follow-up of the activities regarding transitional justice in Burundi.

Victims’ groups were established as a direct result of the project – for example groups of women who suffered from politically motivated sexual violence and survivors of the 1972 killings in Burundi.

The project could most probably have been more efficient if it had been more closely managed by the grantee’s office in South Africa. Its greater involvement would have enhanced the value of the project in the eyes of implementing partners and provided valuable assistance to the staff working on Burundi.

Many of the professionals trained by the grantee before and during the project period have subsequently taken an active part in transitional justice related work in civil society, international organizations, the media and sometimes in state institutions in Burundi. Many representatives working on transitional justice and met by the evaluators had been trained by the grantee, and had used the skills they acquired to develop projects on behalf of their respective NGOs.