While the US government is stepping up pressure on states to sign bilateral agreements guaranteeing American citizens freedom from prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the conflict that divides the US from most of its Western partners has found a new forum for debate, according to a report by the International Justice Tribune, available in full on their website. While renewing the UN mandate in Burundi, the Security Council also acknowledged a UN report on the Gatumba massacre in which at least 152 Congolese Banyamulenge refugees were murdered in their transit camp at Gatumba, Burundi on August 13. In its resolution of 1 December, the Security Council "reiterated its strong condemnation of the Gatumba massacre". The US ambassador made it clear that he "supports the resolution based on the understanding that it in no way directs, encourages, or authorizes [the UN mission] to cooperate with or support the ICC".

Members of the UN Security Council visiting Africa's Great Lakes region asked the government of Burundi on Tuesday to speed up the country's peace process and complete the political transitional period by 2005. "It is imperative to conclude the process as there is no alternative to the 2005 elections," Jean Marc de la Sablière, the French ambassador to the UN and head of the 15-member delegation, told reporters on arrival at Bujumbura airport.

Because of a sharp rise in violent crime, including rape, armed robbery and murder, Burundi is poised to pass a law to greatly speed up the judicial process. But critics, including Amnesty International, say the draft law “makes a mockery of justice.” This week, Burundi’s National Assembly may consider draft legislation that would truncate the judicial process - from arrest to possible execution - to less than 40 days.

The Burundian government and the international community are attentively focused on the mass repatriation of Burundian refugees from Tanzania with perceived improved security scenario within Burundi. But the American based Refugees International, RI, and the Kenya based policy think-tank, ACTS have called on the UN High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR, to slow the repatriation process down until the government of Burundi has shown more progress towards addressing key social issues, such as access to land and housing.

Following reports of sexual exploitation of host populations in several peacekeeping missions in Africa, the UN Mission in Burundi, known as ONUB, has established a Code of Conduct Unit and appointed a gender adviser to make sure this problem does not arise in Burundi. The code of conduct unit and the gender adviser are to help train and sensitise the mission's staff on the expected code of behaviour.

Youth representatives of the Batwa, a group of indigenous people found across central Africa, have asked the governments of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda to ensure they get equal access to land, education and health as other ethnic groups in these countries. The representatives, who have been meeting in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, since Monday, said they planned to empower Batwa youth to protect themselves.

Burundi's President Domitien Ndayizeye has sacked his deputy, Alphonse-Marie Kadege, a day after he voiced concerns on a referendum on the constitution. Mr Kadege had said he doubted the referendum would be held this month as scheduled, due to delays. Mr Kadege, a Tutsi, has repeatedly said the draft constitution gives too much power to the country's Hutu majority.

Concerns over a constitutional crisis in Burundi abated on Monday when six Tutsi-dominated parties dropped their long-standing opposition to the country's current interim constitution. The interim constitution has been in effect since 20 October when the country's transitional, two-chamber parliament voted for it to stay in force for six months. Officially, the transition period ended on Monday, but the interim constitution allows the country's institutions to stay in place until elections are held in 2005.

Hundreds of combatants from various former rebel groups who are cantoned at Bulamata Camp in Burundi's northwestern Bubanza Province are suffering from malaria and diarrhoea and have limited access to medical care, medical officials said on Wednesday. Some 700 combatants at Bulamata live in squalor, the provincial health director in Bubanza, Canésius Havyarimanan, told IRIN. Bubanza Hospital had treated combatants for four months without getting paid, Havyarimanan said, but it is now only treating those with life-threatening diseases.

Motivated by the success in resolving Somalia's conflict, African leaders have stepped up efforts to end the civil war in the tiny central African nation of Burundi where more than 300,000 people have been killed since 1993. Attending the 23rd Summit of the Great Lakes Regional Peace Initiative on Burundi in Kenya’s capital Nairobi Oct. 15, the leaders of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and South Africa pushed Burundi's elections forward to give more time to the country's independent electoral commission, appointed at the end of Aug. 2004, to prepare and put in place modalities of running free and fair elections.

Nurses in hospitals and health centres across Burundi began a two-day strike on Monday to demand better working conditions, while the government would not start talks with the union. Hospitals and health centres in the capital, Bujumbura, and in the provinces of Makamba, Kayanza and Bururi could only provide minimum service. The striking nurses listed 14 demands, including one for overtime pay, stating that the current arrangement was unacceptable.

As Burundians struggle to rebuild their war-torn nation, many have been invoking a local proverb: It is easy to light a fire and difficult to extinguish it. Currently, about 1.2 million people lack basic shelter. They are refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and single mothers whose husbands were killed during the war and who have been left to care for their children. Almost 250,000 new homes are urgently needed. So far, almost none of those homes have been built.

The Implementation and Monitoring Committee (IMC) of the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Accord - under which Burundi's transitional government was established - will make proposals to the government on a possible extension of the three-year transitional period that ends on 31 October, a UN official said on 30 October. The IMC considers the adoption of the post-transition constitution an important step forward in the country's peace process but admits that some issues remain unsettled.

The arrests of two senior Burundi trade union leaders on 24th September 2004, closely followed the leaders' address before workers during which they reportedly criticised government plans to submit a new draft constitution to a national referendum. This led the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) to address the country's President to urge for their immediate and unconditional release.

Hundreds of Congolese refugees in Burundi refused to move to a U.N. camp deeper inside the country and said they wanted to return home after surviving a massacre last month. The U.N High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) planned to move the first group of refugees from temporary transit centres on the border with Congo to a safer site inside Burundi following an ethnic massacre.

Burundi’s political groups have still not agreed on a post-transition constitution, less than two months before planned elections and the transitional period is set to end. Ministers from six Tutsi-dominated parties are boycotting the Council of Ministers meeting that has been in session for the last two weeks to create the constitution.

The demobilisation of army troops and ex-rebels scheduled for 1 September has been postponed because the National Commission for Demobilisation has not yet received the lists of combatants to be discharged, a commission official told IRIN on Tuesday. The process is to take four years. A total of 55,000 combatants are to be demobilised; 25,000 could be eligible to join the new national defence force.

Ministers from Burundi's leading Tutsi parties have boycotted a cabinet meeting called to discuss the drafting of a new constitution. Last month, the Uprona party and its nine allies refused to sign a South African-brokered power-sharing deal, to form the basis of the constitution. They want further dialogue about power-sharing between Hutus and Tutsis, who make up 15% of the population. Without a new constitution, elections due by 31 October cannot go ahead.

Burundi's president and vice president, representing the country's two main political parties, have agreed to appoint an independent electoral commission to oversee the first democratic elections in more than a decade. The commission will consist of three Hutus and two Tutsis and candidates will be approved by the National Assembly. Despite this positive news, a government spokesperson again warned that an October 31st deadline to hold the election might not be met.

Two weeks have passed since 160 Banyamulenge refugees were killed in this desolate transit camp, which lies under the shadow of the Democratic Republic of Congo's Kivu mountains. They had come here to the Burundian border seeking respite from the war that continues to ravage the DRC, hoping if not for peace, then at least for a temporary rest from the horrors they have grown up with. They found instead that war cannot be outrun.