CARE Burundi P-Bouge Series
Brief No. 1.1

Women’s Impact Group

Situational Analysis

1. Background

1.1 The Burundian Context

1.2 How do women in Burundi experience poverty and vulnerability?

2. Underlying Causes: What key drivers perpetuate poverty and vulnerability among rural women?

2.1 Patrilineal System

2.2 Poor Governance

2.3 Overpopulation

3. Moving Forward: What opportunities for change exist within this context? And what are CARE’s next steps in promoting positive change for women?

3.1 Opportunities

3.2 Next Steps

1. Background

1.1 The Burundian Context

After 13 years of civil war, which spanned from 1993-2005, Burundi continues to struggle to overcome the effects of conflict. Sparked by the assassination of President Melchior Ndadaye in 1993, the conflict erupted into ethnic fighting between the Tutsi dominated army and armed Hutu groups.[1]During the war, 300,000 to 400,000 civilians were killed and 1.3 million (16-19 percent of the population) became displaced, as communities were torn apart by ethnic fighting.[2]

In internal displacement and refugee camps, people lived in insecurity and poverty. Life in camps brought a rise in alcoholism, a spike in violence against women and girls, along with the spread of HIV and AIDS.[3] A 2000 study by International Rescue Committee on the state of Burundian refugee camps in Tanzania found that many women and girls reported high rates of sexual violence and harassment, particularly in the forms of rape and forced marriages. Refugees International also found an increase in transactional sex within camps, as girls traded sex for personal supplies.[4] These conditions led to a rise in HIV and AIDS as well as other sexual transmitted infections, in addition to unwanted pregnancies.

Beyond the camps, an estimated 100,000 men, women and children also joined rebel groups, either through abduction or due to poverty or political beliefs.[5] With rebel groups, women took on a number of roles which ranged from sexual slaves, porters, cooks or combatants. There, women and girls were exposed to violence, missed years of education and many mothered children of rebels. While no figures exist on the numbers of women combatants, of the over 40,000 demobilized FNL and CNDD rebel group soldiers, 1500 were women - with many recognizing that women combatants have been disproportionately excluded from the demobilization process and benefits.[6] Through the course of the conflict, more than 70 percent of women involved in combat were victims of gender based violence.[7]

The effects of the war continue to fuel poverty and vulnerability across the nation. In the aftermath of displacement and genocide, most people have returned to villages. However, communities continue to struggle to reconstruct their lives after the multiple losses that many experienced from the conflict. With the dismantlement of camps, women who are widowed or single often must seek means to support themselves and their families in the absence of property rights. Farmers return to fields that have been damaged by violence, looting and neglect during the conflict; some find their land has already been claimed by others. Households struggle to care for the hundreds of thousands of orphans/vulnerable children left from war. Ex-combatants work to reintegrate into and reconcile with their communities.[8]

Today, Burundi ranks 174th of 182 countries in the Human Development Index, and 81 percent of Burundians live below the international poverty line of $1.25 per day.[9] Ninety-two percent of Burundians rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. With only 11,880 square kilometers of arable land and a population of 8.5 million, many households struggle to cultivate enough crops to feed themselves.[10] In 2007, over one million people relied on food aid. A study of 32 collines by CARE, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision and Africare found that households on average consume 1.73 meals per day, with women and older children often taking less food in the lean periods between February through April (and sometimes into May).[11] In this context, 39 percent of children under five are moderately or severely underweight, and 53 percent suffer from stunting.[12]

With 66 percent of the population under the age of 25, the weak and agriculturally dependent economy offers few livelihood opportunities for a largely young population, stirring discontent and perpetuating poverty.[13] Loss of infrastructure from conflict also denies many Burundians of basic services. During the war, three-quarters of district health centers were destroyed.[14] Nearly a third of the population does not have sustained access to clean water (34 percent and 20 percent in rural and urban areas, respectively) and almost two thirds do not have access to basic sanitation facilities.[15]

The strain on time, resources and services as a result of the war and poverty weigh disproportionately on women. With growing poverty, women and girls were less likely to gain access to education or health services and more likely to suffer from hunger and malnutrition. For other women, particularly those who were single, abandoned, divorced or widowed, the period of dismantlement of camps and return to home villages left them with nowhere to go. For both women in combat and women in displacement camps, the war led to a rise in gender based violence, female-headed households, and HIV and AIDS.

Since 2008, CARE has made a strategic commitment to promoting the rights of rural women in Burundi. As a result, CARE has transitioned away from a donor-driven, short-term, sector-focused approach toward a more strategic and integrated approach to its work that centers on social transformation for a sustainable impact on the lives of poor rural women. This initiative is known as the Program Shift (or P-Bouge in Burundi).[16]

As part of the P-Bouge, staff and partners of CARE Burundi have undertaken systematic analyses in order to understand the root causes of poverty and vulnerability affecting women’s lives. This paper presents some of the key findings from CARE’s research on poverty and vulnerability among rural women, in order to highlight:

  • How do women in Burundi experience poverty and vulnerability?
  • Underlying causes: What key drivers perpetuate poverty and vulnerability among rural women?
  • Moving Forward: What opportunities for change exist within this context? And what are CARE’s next steps in promoting positive change for women?

1.2 How do women in Burundi experience poverty and vulnerability?

Across its women’s empowerment initiatives, CARE works to understand the experiences of women – their challenges, achievements and aspirations. Since 2007, CARE Burundi has undertaken a series of studies to understand women’s empowerment in the communities where we work. This learning has taken place through appreciative inquiry, literature review, focus group discussions, program design workshops and reviews of program documents. From this research, CARE found that women experience poverty across agency, relational and structural dimensions of their lives in ways that reinforce and perpetuate their vulnerability:[17]

1.2.1 Agency

  • Many women cannot refuse sexual relations with their partners for fear of violence;
  • Women often endure physical, sexual and psycho-social abuse and violence in their homes and communities.
  • Even while acknowledging that men have multiple sexual partners, many women continue to engage in unprotected sex. A study in Ngozi and Kirundo provinces found that despite high levels of knowledge about HIV transmission and prevention, only 2.7 percent of women interviewed reported regular use of condoms with partners.[18]
  • As a result of the above points, women are more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections in addition to unwanted pregnancy. In Burundi, an estimated 40,000-70,000 women are living with HIV/AIDS (out of an estimated 66,000-120,000 adults living with HIV/AIDS).[19] Risk of HIV/AIDS is particularly high in urban areas, affecting 3.8 percent of young people (aged 15-24) as opposed to 2.9 percent of their rural counterparts.[20]
  • Women face high rates of maternal mortality, with a maternal mortality ratio of 1100 per 100,000 births. One in 16 women dies of pregnancy related complications in Burundi.[21]
  • In comparison to men, women suffer from poorer health and nutrition, as they are often the first to cut food intake in times of scarcity, as well as the last to access health services.
  • Women do not have decision-making power over most household resources or revenue.
  • Women who have been abandoned by their partners or husbands often face the challenge of raising their children without support from others or any claims to productive assets.
  • Linked with the inferiority prescribed to them, many women have a poor sense of self-esteem or self-efficacy.
  • Women are generally unaware of their rights and do not act to claim them.
  • Women are often less educated, with literacy rates of 52 percent (as opposed to 67 percent for men).[22] With fewer marketable skills along with less information or knowledge to realize their rights, women have few viable livelihood opportunities.
  • With no access to land, many women sell labor, engage in domestic work or migrate to urban areas and become vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

1.2.2 Relations

  • Many women are treated as inferior to men, and often cannot negotiate effectively within the household or community.
  • Some women in polygamous relationships are abandoned by their husbands, often in favor of younger wives. For those whose marriages were never legalized, they are often left with no land or livestock to support themselves or their children.
  • Because of this uncertainty within the family over inheritance, conflict often arises among co-wives in polygamous relationships.
  • There is a weak sense of community solidarity among women to ensure and promote their rights.
  • The dynamics surrounding women’s relations with men prevent many women from joining associations.
  • Women living outside of traditional roles (migrants to cities, abandoned women, single women, ex-combatants, Batwa, divorced women, women affected by HIV and AIDS, women living with partners outside of marriage, teenage mothers, homosexual women) can be isolated from their families and communities and are offered no or little social support.[23]
  • Once married, women receive little support from their natal homes as they are no longer considered a part of the family.

1.2.3 Structures

  • Linked to the previous point, community discrimination and stigma marginalize women who are single mothers, affected or infected by HIV and AIDS, divorced, urban migrants, widowed, Batwa, homosexual, in polygamous relationships or unmarried and living with partners.
  • Batwa women face systematic discrimination because of ethnic marginalization. The Batwa are generally unable to share food with or even sell it to other ethnic groups and in customary law, the group is denied access to land.
  • Women are expected to give birth to larger numbers of children and feel pressured to fulfill this responsibility in order to secure their position and prove their worth to the family. On average, women in Burundi give birth to 6 to 7 children.
  • Through bride-price, women are often viewed as a productive asset and belonging to their husband and his clan.
  • Women have less access to land or work, largely because of their lack of inheritance rights – this particularly affects widows whose land can be reclaimed by the family of their former husbands and women who have been left/abandoned by their partners or husbands.
  • In community organizations, committees or justice systems, women lack space to assert their interests or claim their rights.
  • Women are rarely represented in community government or management structures and have little space to influence community decision-making.

Focusing on a woman’s experiences, it is clear that a myriad of forces and constraints reinforce and perpetuate women’s continued poverty and vulnerability in Burundi. Poverty and vulnerability affect a woman’s ability or sense of capability to act and make decisions concerning her life (agency); the dynamics and quality of how she interacts with others (relations); and her status and access to basic rights within her community, in the law and among her family (structures). Each of these areas of her life further interacts with one another to perpetuate a woman’s experiences of vulnerability.

Also, the research highlights that different categories of women experience poverty in different ways. Within the context of Burundi, single mothers, ex-combatants, women affected or infected by HIV and AIDS, divorced women, widowed women, Batwa, women in polygamous relationships or unmarried women living with partners are often further discriminated against and marginalized within communities. However, at the same time, it is important to remember that even within each of these groups, women are diverse. No two women will experience poverty and vulnerability in exactly the same way.

2. Underlying Causes: What key drivers perpetuate poverty and vulnerability among rural women?

So, why are women poor? And what perpetuates poverty and vulnerability in their lives?

Over the past year, these are the questions that CARE’s P-Bouge team, which is comprised of CARE staff, partners and government representatives, asked itself. Based on their research, reflection and analysis, consolidated through a series of workshops, the teams identified two key underlying causes of poverty (UCPs): patrilineal system[24] and poor governance. Teams also identified overpopulation as a key intermediate cause of poverty and conflict as an important cross-cutting issue that further perpetuate women’s vulnerability and poverty across each of these areas.

2.1 Patrilineal System

Within Burundian culture, men play a dominant role in leading community structures, defining lineage of kinship, clan and ethnicity. Since its arrival in the early 1900s, colonial rule and the church reinforced women’s marginalization through a government structure where women were absent from any positions of decision-making and an education system that excluded girls until the 1950s (20 years after its establishment). Each of these influences has shaped the inequalities of today and the roles of women in both the public and private sphere.[25]

2.1.1 The Public Sphere

Burundian society is rooted in a religious monarchy, where the male chief (mwami) led both the political and spiritual lives of his people. Within this hierarchy, community leaders, which included a class of conflict-reconciliation arbiters (bashingantahe), were also all male. One study on culture and gender in Burundi found that the wives of the bashingantahe did wield some influence upon their husbands who would “consult their consciences” before making decisions.[26] Formally, the only women involved in political life were those who acted on behalf of their young sons or recently deceased husbands on a temporary basis. In particular, the queen-mother (the mother of the future chief and usually the mwami’s youngest wife) enjoyed an elevated status among women and greater voice in community decision-making.[27]

Cultural norms continue to limit women’s ability to participate in community-level decision-making, move freely outside of the home, interact freely with local leaders or even speak in public. As a result, women face limited access to justice and representation in the community.[28] With few formal roles in the public sphere, women’s lives are traditionally centered within the home.

2.1.2 The Private Sphere

In the private sphere, women’s roles are rooted in the expectation that they will marry, give birth to a large family and contribute in agricultural production.

The importance of marriage

Marriage is a critical aspect of a woman’s life that has implications on her economic viability, social acceptability and political voice.

Economically, many women rely on marriage to gain access to and claim over the land and livestock from their husbands. Without inheritance rights, marriage provides some security to women in ensuring household assets are shared and children are financially supported. Even if the relationship ends in divorce, women and their children can claim certain rights to household assets that are not recognized without legalized marriage.

In addition to the economic security that marriage represents, unmarried women are often looked down upon by the community. Those who remain single or enter into non-legalized domestic partnerships – most often because of the inability to pay bride-price – become targets of gossip and condescension.

Communities also view couples living in domestic partnerships as a violation of religious values. These women are isolated by their families and the community, who are forbidden by the church to attend any celebrations or ceremonies held by or for them. As a result of these rules, many unmarried couples are socially isolated and do not celebrate the births of their children or other important life events.

This social dimension of exclusion also translates directly into the political sphere. In Gitega Province, some local administrations have taken an active role in condemning couples who live together unmarried by exacting fines or chasing the women out of the villages. Any unmarried individual cannot take part in community level decision-making or conflict-resolution as they are not regarded as adults. In the plains region of Burundi, however, this has not been the case; a number of local leaders themselves live in polygamous relationships that are not recognized within the church or law. In terms of legal justice, women and their children have no claims over household assets, support or inheritance if they were never married to their partners. As a result, while some men may offer a portion of land to women during a separation, many do not split assets with women who must then return to their parental homes or sell labor to support themselves and their children.[29]