Burundi

What has happened

The United States may propose transfers to Burundi “in its complete discretion,” including of people who “raise national security or public safety concerns.” There is no cap, no monitoring provision, no reporting requirement and no access for any monitor. Onward transfer is contemplated in the text and addressed only by assurance.

The assurance is given by a government whose conduct a United Nations commission of inquiry found gave “reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed.”

Whether anyone has been sent: the honest answer.

CBS News reported on 30 August 2026, on internal government documents, that three ICE flights “dropped off dozens of men and women expelled from the U.S. in Burundi” among seven other countries. That is an affirmative assertion from a serious source and should not be minimised. But for Burundi it supplies no count, no date, no landing site, no nationality and no named individual, where for other countries CBS gave exactly those particulars. The State Department declined to authenticate the documents. Burundi’s own foreign ministry has published nothing. No wire service and no Burundian outlet has reported an arrival.

One tracker’s statement that “no transfers are known to have occurred” is dated 15 June 2026 and is not a rebuttal of CBS; it predates the report by two and a half months. Setting them against each other would misrepresent both.

The arrangement, and what it cost

What the instrument permits, verbatim.

“The Participants intend to arrange the transfer from the United States to Burundi of certain third-country nationals present in the United States. This may include third-country nationals who raise national security or public safety concerns.”

“The Government of the United States of America may in its complete discretion propose to the Government of Burundi the transfer of such third-country nationals, and the Government of Burundi may in its complete discretion consider accepting such a proposal in whole or in part.”

Exchange of notes of 8 December 2025, 6 February 2026 and 12 February 2026, retrieved from the State Department Case Act library, file 2026-0027QN.

Onward transfer is contemplated in the text itself.

Burundi assures that transferees would not be subjected to persecution or “torture in Burundi or in any country to which Burundi may further transfer the third-country nationals.”

That clause presupposes onward transfer as a live possibility and answers it with a promise.

There is no monitoring, no cap, and no reporting.

The only two provisions touching implementation are that the participants “intend to develop, to the extent appropriate, operating procedures” and “intend to consult to resolve any questions about interpretation or implementation.” There is no reporting requirement, no access for UNHCR, the ICRC or any monitor, no reception conditions, no named point of contact and no review period. The text contains no number and no formula limiting transfers.

A record was withdrawn and replaced, and what changed is not public.

Burundi’s note of 6 February 2026 opens by asking the United States Embassy to “consider the January 20th, 2026, Note as withdrawn and superseded by this Note.” An earlier Burundian reply exists and is not published. What changed between 20 January and 6 February is not on the record.

What the record says about Burundi itself

The Committee against Torture invoked an exceptional procedure against Burundi, and Burundi walked out.

In 2016 the Committee demanded a special report under article 19(1). Burundi’s delegation attended the first meeting and did not appear at the second. The Committee adopted findings on the record before it: 348 extrajudicial executions documented in a year, “committed mainly by the security forces,” and “at least nine mass graves around Bujumbura”; 651 cases of torture, occurring “mainly on the premises of the National Intelligence Service … but also at unofficial sites of detention … to which national and international observers have not been granted access”; 5,881 arrests or detentions of which 3,477 “can be considered to have been arbitrary or illegal”; 36 enforced disappearances; and “genocidal rhetoric” by senior officials.

It also recorded reprisals: the Prosecutor sought the disbarment of four lawyers who had contributed to the civil-society submission.

CAT/C/BDI/CO/2/Add.1, 9 September 2016.

In 2023 the Committee said the violations could amount to crimes against humanity.

“The Committee points out that a number of these violations could constitute crimes against humanity.” It was concerned at “the delay in establishing a national mechanism for the prevention of torture,” an obligation Burundi took on in 2013, and “deeply concerned at the State party’s lack of cooperation with the individual complaints procedure and its failure to implement the Committee’s decisions in almost all cases.” The four lawyers had by then been disbarred and criminally convicted, and the Committee found the penalties “could constitute reprisals.”

CAT/C/BDI/CO/3, 11 December 2023. The follow-up report the Committee required by 24 November 2024 has not been filed.

A commission of inquiry reached the same conclusion in 2017, and the mandate is still live.

“The Commission has reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed in Burundi since April 2015.” On transfer specifically: “the risk that the refugees might be subjected to gross violations of human rights if they are sent back to Burundi necessitates strict respect for the principle of non-refoulement.”

The commission’s successor mandate, a Special Rapporteur, was renewed by the Human Rights Council in October 2025 by 23 votes to 9.

A/HRC/36/54, 11 August 2017; A/HRC/60/60, 12 August 2025.

The United States made its own findings months before it proposed the transfers.

The State Department’s Burundi report for 2024, published in July 2025, records “credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings; disappearances; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; arbitrary arrest or detention; transnational repression against individuals in another country,” that “the SNR tortured their victims to extract confessions,” and that the Committee against Torture found the service “intentionally tortured political opponents.”

The United States accepted an assurance against torture and onward refoulement from a government its own Department of State had, five months earlier, found to torture political opponents intentionally and to pursue refugees across borders.

The first days

Burundi is the only country in this project from which an individual can complain to the United Nations Committee against Torture. It made the declaration under article 22 on 10 June 2003 and has never withdrawn it. Everywhere else in this project that door is shut.

Its national human rights commission also has an express mandate to make regular visits, notified or unannounced, to all places of detention, and to prevent torture. It has published what those visits produce: in 2021 it recorded 271 visits and 675 detainees released after its intervention.

Two things are missing and this page says so at the start. Burundi has no national preventive mechanism despite acceding to the Optional Protocol in 2013, and the International Committee of the Red Cross does not list visiting detainees among its activities in Burundi.

Who is reachable in Burundi

There is a court you can file in, and you have two months

Read this first if you or someone you know is detained here now.

This country is a member of the East African Community. Its Court of Justice, sitting at Arusha, is open to any person resident in a Partner State. You do not need this country to have signed anything extra. You do not have to go through the local courts first.

But the time limit is two months, and it runs from the day the detention began, not the day it ends.

Article 30(2) of the Treaty establishing the East African Community requires proceedings to be brought “within two months of the enactment, publication, directive, decision or action complained of, or in the absence thereof, of the day in which it came to the knowledge of the complainant.”

The Court’s Appellate Division has held that this is absolute. In a case brought by men who had been seized in one country, taken to another and were still in detention when they filed, the Court said:

“The Court finds the Respondents’ argument that when the act complained of is a continuous detention, the starting date for computation of its limitation time is the day when it ceases is erroneous… nowhere does the Treaty provide any power to the Court to extend, to condone, to waive, or to modify the prescribed time limit for any reason (including for ‘continuing violations’).”

“the starting date of an act complained of under Article 30(2), (including the detention of a complainant), is not the day the act ends, but the day it is first effected.”

Their case was struck out while they were still held. If you have been detained for more than two months, this door has probably closed. If you have been detained for less than two months, it is open today and will not be open for long.

The one narrow exception, and it is about concealment.

Where a state hid the detention, the Court has allowed a case to proceed because the state could not show when the applicant or their family learned of it. That is a point about who must prove what, not a doctrine that a continuing detention restarts the clock. If your detention was concealed from your family, say so, and say when they found out, because the date they found out may be the date that counts.

What you can and cannot ask the Court to decide.

This matters, and getting it wrong loses the case at the door. The Court has no human rights jurisdiction as such. The protocol that was supposed to give it one, under Article 27(2) of the Treaty, has never been agreed.

What the Court can do is interpret the Treaty, and it has held that a state breaches the Treaty when it breaks the rule of law. The obligations to use are Article 6(d), which binds Partner States to good governance including “adherence to the principles of democracy, the rule of law” and “the recognition, promotion and protection of human and peoples rights in accordance with the provisions of the African Charter”, and Article 7(2), by which states undertake to abide by “the maintenance of universally accepted standards of human rights”.

The Court put its own position this way:

“While the Court will not assume jurisdiction to adjudicate on human rights disputes, it will not abdicate from exercising its jurisdiction of interpretation under Article 27(1) merely because the Reference includes allegation of human rights violation.”

So the claim must be framed as a breach of the Treaty, not as a human rights violation. A case pleaded the other way round is likely to fail on jurisdiction without anyone looking at what happened to you.

One more limit, and it bites on people transferred here.

The Court has protected a person turned back at an airport and briefly detained, but on the basis of free movement rights that belong to citizens of Partner States. It said expressly that the national immigration law remains applicable “where citizens of other nations, except the Partner States, are concerned.” A person transferred here from outside East Africa cannot use that route and has only the rule of law argument under Articles 6(d) and 7(2).

Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community, Articles 6(d), 7(2), 27, 30 and 38, from the text published by the East African Legislative Assembly. Attorney General of the Republic of Uganda v Omar Awadh and 6 Others, Appeal No. 2 of 2012, Appellate Division, 15 April 2013. Attorney General of the Republic of Kenya v Independent Medical Legal Unit, Appeal No. 1 of 2011, 15 March 2012. Katabazi and 21 Others v Secretary General of the East African Community, Reference No. 1 of 2007, 1 November 2007. Samuel Mukira Mohochi v Attorney General of Uganda, Reference No. 5 of 2011, 17 May 2013. Attorney General of Rwanda v Plaxeda Rugumba, Appeal No. 1 of 2012, 1 June 2012. Checked 8 September 2026. The Coalition is reading these provisions and judgments, not advising on them, and a lawyer admitted in the region should settle how a particular case is framed.

What the judgment is worth if you win.

Article 38(3) requires a Partner State to take the measures needed to implement a judgment “without delay”, and Article 33(2) gives the Court’s decisions precedence over national court decisions on the same matter. Article 44 provides for execution, but only of judgments imposing a pecuniary obligation, and only through the ordinary civil procedure of the state concerned. There is no body that monitors compliance and no sanction if a state ignores the Court. The Coalition could find no published figure for how often states comply.

Which complaint routes are open

Open, and open here alone: individual complaint to the United Nations Committee against Torture.

Burundi acceded to the Convention against Torture on 18 February 1993 and made the declaration under article 22 on 10 June 2003, ten years later, recognising the competence of the Committee to receive communications from or on behalf of individuals. It has never withdrawn it and has entered no reservations.

Of the nine countries the Coalition has examined in this group, Burundi is the only one where this route exists. A person held in Burundi, or someone acting for them, may take a case to the Committee directly.

United Nations Treaty Collection, chapter IV-9, checked 8 September 2026. Note that the depositary’s printed volume gives no date for the declaration and its rubric implies declarations were made on accession; the date of 10 June 2003 is on the depositary’s own online record. The Coalition uses the dated record.

Closed: going to the African Court.

Burundi ratified the Protocol establishing the African Court on 2 April 2003 and deposited the instrument on 12 May 2003. It has never made the declaration under article 34(6), so neither an individual nor an organisation can file directly. The route to the Court runs only through the African Commission.

Not open in practice: preventive inspection under the Optional Protocol.

Burundi acceded to the Optional Protocol on 18 October 2013. Thirteen years later it has no national preventive mechanism, and it remains on the Subcommittee’s list of states not complying with that obligation.

The Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture has never visited Burundi. A visit planned for 2025 was postponed and relisted for 2026, and as at July 2026 it had still not been conducted.

The national commission’s mandate does cover torture prevention and visits to places of detention, and it exercises it. But it is not the mechanism under the Optional Protocol and carries none of the guarantees that status would bring.

Where the Committee against Torture last said anything.

The Committee adopted concluding observations on 24 November 2023, CAT/C/BDI/CO/3. Burundi’s fourth periodic report is not due until 24 November 2027, so it is not overdue. Burundi was also the subject of a special reporting procedure: the Committee required a special report, Burundi submitted it on 30 June 2016, and special concluding observations were adopted on 12 August 2016.

Treaty positions from the United Nations Treaty Collection, chapters IV-9 and IV-9-b, the African Union depositary list, and the United Nations Treaty Body Database. Subcommittee visit status from its own annual reports. All checked 8 September 2026.

What this page still does not know

Whether anyone transferred to Burundi has taken a case to the Committee against Torture under article 22, which is the one route open to them. Where the people transferred are now, and under what status. Whether the national human rights commission has visited any of them, which it has the mandate and the practice to do. Why the International Committee of the Red Cross does not visit detainees in Burundi when it does in Uganda and, in a limited way, in Rwanda. The city that goes with the commission’s published street address, which its own magazine omits. And when the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture will finally conduct the visit it has been planning since 2025.

If you know any of these, the Coalition wants to hear from you.

The dated record

Every entry below is a fact with a source.

What is not established

The Coalition publishes what it can source and says plainly what it cannot. The following is open on this page.

Whether any transfer has occurred at all. This is the highest-priority open question of the eight. Also: the contents of the withdrawn note of 20 January 2026; whether any operating procedures exist; whether any United States payment was made, Burundi being absent from the Senate committee’s list of five paid governments; and whether the reported $8 million to IOM Burundi and $129 million health agreement bear any established relationship to the arrangement, which no primary document shows.