Roundup: UN Security Council meets on current crisis in Burundi

The UN Security Council on Friday met behind closed doors on the current situation in Burundi, where pre-election violence, which broke out last month, prompted more than 50,000 people to flee to neighboring countries.

Before the closed meeting called by France, a permanent member of the council, ambassadors from the 15 council members were briefed by UN special envoy Said Djinnit on the current situation in Burundi, said diplomats who attended the council meeting, adding that Djinnit described the situation as tense in the African country.

On April 17, the Security Council called upon all parties in Burundi to "refrain from any acts of violence and intimidation before, during, and after elections" in the country.

Burundi is scheduled to hold communal and legislative elections on May 26 followed by presidential elections on June 26 and senatorial elections on Aug. 24.

One unique point of Burundi's 2015 elections is that the process will be monitored by UN electoral observers in conformity with a resolution of the Security Council.

Also in April, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced his concerns about violence in the run-up to Burundi's presidential election and urged the government to ensure the vote is free and fair.

On Friday, the current Burundian president, Pierre Nkurunziza, registered in the capital Bujumbura to run for a third term, in a move likely to stoke anger among protesters opposing his bid for another five years in office.

Crowds have taken to the streets of the capital and clashed with police for almost two weeks, saying that Nkurunziza's plan to run again violates the constitution and a peace deal that ended an ethnically-charged civil war in 2005.

Burundi's Roman Catholic Church, the opposition parties and some civil organizations have announced their opposition against Nkurunziza's decision, saying the move will violate the Arusha Agreement and Burundi's Constitution, and may bring violence to the East African nation.

The constitution stipulates that a president of Burundi cannot serve the country for more than two terms. Nkurunziza was elected by parliament in 2005 and re-elected by citizens in 2010.

The eruption of pre-election violence in Burundi last month has seen more than 50,000 people flee to neighboring countries and threatens to undo some of the most promising developments in recent refugee history in Africa, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.

"Many of these have crossed into Rwanda (25,004), but over the last week we have also seen a sharp increase in people seeking asylum in Tanzania (17,696) after entry restrictions there were lifted," Adrian Edwards, spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees told reporters.

"In addition, almost 8,000 people have crossed into South Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," he said. "In all these cases women and children, including a large number of unaccompanied children, are in the majority."

Neighboring Tanzania was among countries that hosted large numbers of Burundian refugees who fled violence in 1972.

In recent years, Tanzania offered citizenship to around 200,000 of them and their descendants, which is the largest number of refugees UNHCR has ever seen locally integrated by a host country.

Thousands of others have been successfully resettled overseas, including more than 8,000 in the United States, reports said.

Concerns over the political crisis in Burundi turning into a humanitarian one were echoed by the spokesperson from the World Food Programme (WFP), Elisabeth Byrs, who said she was also concerned about the tens of thousands of people leaving the country.

WFP is providing food and nutrition assistance for more than 25, 000 Burundian refugees in Rwanda, said Byrs, with the agency and other humanitarian partners preparing to assist 50,000 to 100,000 refugees in Rwanda.

Resources are stretched by the influx, she said, adding that WFP is on the ground in a new transit camp and three transit centers providing food assistance to Burundian refugees, starting with high energy biscuits.

She said a quarter of the children arriving in the transit camp at Mahama are malnourished and WFP is providing hot meals and ready-to-use supplementary food to help them recover.

Additionally, the WFP would start blanket supplementary feeding for all young children as soon as possible to avert any further deterioration of refugees' nutritional status.

Turning to the challenges that the WFP was facing, Byrs said that the WFP in Rwanda did not have enough resources to respond to the food needs of the increasing number of refugees from Burundi.

The UN agency had been able to mobilize some emergency funding, allowing them to immediately respond to the initial needs, but that was not enough to sustain assistance, especially if the number of refugees kept rising.

WFP urgently needed a minimum of 5 million U.S. dollars to meet food needs of 50,000 to 100,000 refugees who could arrive in the coming six months. Endite