Our lecturer of International Relations at Makerere University, Prof. Gingyera-Pinycwa (RIP), challenged our mastery of Christianity when he cited what inspired the founding of the United Nations: …they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks.

We tried as we could but none of us in the class that day could identify Isaiah 2:4 whence the UN drew its inspiration for a new world. The world envisaged by the founders of the UN, upgraded from the League of Nations, was a world where man will have attained his fullness of civilisation; where the divine component of man controls and directs the animal in man. This is the world that Isaiah heralds, when man needs no arms against man, thus rendering tools of war into tools of production.

Save for a few isolated cases, the UN has, since its formation, not lived to its billing as committed to by its founders. The world gets more chaotic each day, despite advances in science and technology. Yet the UN remains the only hope for civilised engagement, where negotiation and horse-trading replace confrontation and fire-power exchange. For the 60-odd years of its life, the UN has only succeeded in countless negotiations, rounds of conferences and, at best, deploying peacekeepers. Rare cases like Timor Leste point to the capacity of the UN to solve human conflict and promote development.

The Burundi fratricide

The current fratricide in Burundi presents the UN with an opportunity and obligation to bring into visible, tangible, felt and lived reality, its raison d’être. As depicted in the bronze sculpture presented to the UN by the USSR in 1959, the UN must take charge in Burundi, and beat all tools of war into tools of production. The little history I know about Burundi tells me that no single external power has ever invaded Burundi, save for the German occupation and later Belgian mandate after the defeat of Germany. For all her 52 years of independence, all ‘wars’ have been internal strife, ranging from coups, assassinations and factional rebellions to ethnic repression and civil protests. It, therefore, follows that Burundi does not need an army.

It’s about time the UN, AU, CEPGL, EAC, COMESA, SADC, ICGLR, Amani Forum, and other regional bodies need to meet from the refugee camps where innocent Barundi are suffering and dying. This will bring them closer to the reality (of the crisis). The practice of ‘discussing famine over steak’ in five-star hotels partly explains the perennial crises in Africa –these have become occasions for per diems and high-flying. Check out the story of South Sudan ‘talks’ in Addis Ababa or the longlasting ‘negotiations’ by the Somali factions in Nairobi and Eldoret.

Conferences should be held in the Burundian refugee camps in Rwanda, Tanzania and DR Congo. That should lead to the signing of a treaty declaring Burundi a neutral country.

There would be no wheel reinvented here. Countries like Switzerland were declared neutral during the Cold War era and protected by international treaties. They saw no need to invest in armies and arms, besides housing headquarters of many UN agencies. The UN must do the same for Burundi. A national gendarmerie is what the country could need after the treaty.

The Charity Ngilu Model

While launching her campaign for the aborted presidential bid, Kenyan politician Charity Ngilu had an intriguing proposal for eradicating unemployment from Kenya.  Her model? One Chinese, One Kenyan Egg per Month’. China is a strategic economic partner of Africa, so the concession Mrs Ngilu would seek was the government in China to allow each Chinese to eat one Kenyan egg per month: the power of numbers!

And this is what the UN and regional bodies can implement in Burundi: Simple arithmetic indicates that to produce 1 billion eggs per month, it requires 1.3 billion layers, employing 2.6 million people. Burundi’s active population is around 3.3 million. The UN has the financial muscle to establish poultry farms across Burundi. In return, all the military hardware in the country would be handed to the UN.

I had a portion of my education in Burundi during her heady days. The Barundi are a peaceful people. It is a society that can laugh at itself. Whatever interests are behind the current fratricide, they can be catered for while citizens live in peace. And the Burundi leadership needs to reflect as they curse colonialists whenever they visit the Prince Rwagasore mausoleum, while they run dry of words as they tread the short, eerie isthmus between La Place de l’Independance and l’Hôtel Source du Nil.