A standing committee of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) will tomorrow start a four-day public hearing on the humanitarian crisis in Burundi. Sitting in Arusha, Tanzania, the EALA Regional Affairs and Conflict Resolution Committee has called for the public hearing workshop intended to review the petition by the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU) submitted to EALA in November 2015. The committee will be looking to establish the facts of humanitarian atrocities as reported in the petition and to make recommendations to the regional assembly during the next Sitting scheduled to commence on January 24, in Arusha. A statement from EALA indicates that participants are expected from the Committee MPs, government officials from Burundi, Civil Society Organisation representatives from Burundi, and representatives from the country’s Political Parties and the petitioners. Last November, four Civil Society Organisations led by PALU petitioned EALA to urgently undertake specified number of actions within its mandate to contain the situation in Burundi. In the petition, the Civil Society representatives urged EALA to call upon the Chair of the Assembly of Heads of State and Governments of the African Union to take concrete steps towards preventing Burundi from descending into genocide or mass atrocities. The petitioners, among others, suggested measures including; enhancing the numbers and capacity of the human rights monitors and military monitors deployed to Burundi, and called for the sanctions regime of the AU to be activated. They also urged the House to make strong recommendations to the Summit of EAC Heads of State that Burundi should not assume the rotating Chairmanship of the EAC until it resolves the political, human rights and humanitarian crisis in the country. The public hearing in Arusha will welcome Burundian and East African citizens to testify to the occurrences in the country and to suggest proposals for resolution to the conflict.
