13 leading non-governmental organizations have called for Burundi to be suspended from membership in the UN Human Rights Council, due to its flagrant refusal to cooperate with the UN regarding the gross and systematic violations occurring in the country.
The NGOs cite recent findings by an independent UN panel of experts of ‘continuing and systematic, gross human rights violations which may amount to crimes against humanity’ in Burundi.
The UN experts further found that ‘responsibility for the vast majority of these violations should be laid at the door of the Government’.
The authorities of Burundi have rejected all cooperation with the international human rights system, including by refusing to appear at a hearing of the UN Committee against Torture, by making threats against human rights lawyers and other civil society actors who have provided information to the UN, and by an official government communiqué declaring that Burundi will no longer cooperate in any way with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and that each of the UN experts tasked with investigating the situation will be formally barred from visiting the country.
The open letter setting out the detailed grounds for the call for suspension may be downloaded in PDF format here: