AFRICA - House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats

50
dren also were trafficked into the country. Destinations for trafficked Burkinabe
children included Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria.
In many instances, children voluntarily traveled to Cote d’Ivoire to work as agricultural
laborers to escape poverty at home; however, in other cases, children were
lured to plantation work in Cote d’Ivoire by false promises of generous remuneration,
only to be forced to work under very harsh conditions for little or no payment.
Some children were forced to work long hours without pay, allegedly to repay costs
of their transport to Cote d’Ivoire and the costs of food and housing on the plantation.
The Government worked with international donors and the ILO to address child
trafficking. The Government also organized seminars against child trafficking for
customs officers. During the year, similar workshops and seminars were organized
for gendarmes and the civil society.
During the year, in coordination with donors, the Government started a program
to establish watch committees in certain provinces in which child trafficking and
labor were problems. The watch committees included representatives of industries
usually implicated in child labor (cotton growers, for example), the police, NGOs,
and social welfare agencies.
Since August 2001, the Coalition in Burkina Faso for Children’s Rights
(COBUFADE) conducted, in conjunction with IPEC, a sensitizing campaign on child
labor to develop and strengthen children’s rights. The campaign targeted at least
30,000 working children in various sectors, 3,000 employers, 5,000 business and social
leaders, and 250 associations. In addition, in June IPEC initiated a program
of action to prevent child trafficking for work purposes on cotton plantations, and
the program was expected to run from October through September 2003.
BURUNDI
Prior to the inauguration of a transitional government in November 2001, Burundi
was ruled by an authoritarian military regime led by self-proclaimed interim
President Pierre Buyoya, a former army Major who was brought to power in a
bloodless coup by the largely ethnic Tutsi armed forces in 1996 and who abrogated
the Constitution. President Buyoya held power in conjunction with a political power
structure dominated by members of the Tutsi ethnic group. Since 1993 the civil war
has caused thousands of civilian deaths and mass internal displacement. In July
2001, President Buyoya and the regional leaders signed an agreement to begin the
3-year transition period agreed to in peace negotiations on November 1, 2001. The
two major armed rebel groups declined to join the peace process. A Transition Constitution
was adopted in October 2001, and on November 1, 2001, Buyoya was sworn
in as president; Domitien Ndayizeye, the secretary general of the predominantly
ethnic Hutu opposition party FRODEBU, was sworn in as vice president. Under the
agreement, Buyoya will serve as transition president for 18 months and then be succeeded
by Ndayizeye, who will serve 18 months as transition president. Continued
efforts to negotiate a cease-fire with the two largest rebel groups were unsuccessful.
Political parties operated under significant restraints. The judiciary was controlled
by the ethnic Tutsi minority and was not impartial or efficient.
The security forces were controlled by the Tutsi minority and consisted of the
army and the gendarmerie under the Ministry of Defense, the judicial police under
the Ministry of Justice, and the intelligence service under the presidency. The Government
created the Guardians of the Peace, armed paramilitary civil defense units,
to serve in Bujumbura, the suburbs of Bujumbura, and Bujumbura Rural, Ruyigi,
Rutana, and Bururi Provinces. The civilian authorities did not maintain effective
control of the security forces. Members of the security forces continued to commit
numerous serious human rights abuses.
The country, which has a population of 6.4 million, was poor, and approximately
90 percent of the population was dependent on subsistence agriculture. Many internally
displaced persons (IDPs) were unable to grow food and depended largely on
international humanitarian assistance. The civil war has caused severe economic
disruption, especially to the small modern sector of the economy, which was based
mainly on the export of coffee, tea, and cotton. The country’s GDP dropped from $4.1
billion in 1998 to $662.4 million in 2001, and wages have not kept pace with inflation.
The Government continued its plans to privatize publicly-owned enterprises,
but made little progress during the year.
The Government’s human rights record remained poor, and it continued to commit
numerous serious abuses. Citizens did not have the right to change their government.
Security forces continued to commit numerous arbitrary and unlawful
killings with impunity. The armed forces killed armed rebels and unarmed civilians,
VerDate 11-MAY-2000 08:43 Jul 22, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00080 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 86917.002 SFRELA2 PsN: SFRELA2