- Demobilise all child soldiers (estimated at 3,000) involved in military training of the government
army and in targeted rebel factions over a period of twelve months;
- Reintegrate into their communities all demobilised child soldiers in an eight-month period;
- Ensure that mechanisms to prevent the recruitment of children by all parties to the conflict are
established and operational in a period of eighteen months.
167. The groups of children targeted by the programme are:
(i) child soldiers recruited by the government army;
(ii) community police; and child combatants in the armed movements that signed the ceasefire
agreements. At the end of this national disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR)
programme, the second phase began in 2009 under the leadership of a technical coordination team
in the Transitional Demobilisation and Reintegration Programme (TDP) who demobilised 7734 ex
combatants including 626 children. In total, 3654 children left armed groups between 2004 and
2009.44
168. It should be noted that for the protection and supervision of children in times of armed conflict,
the four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 relating to the treatment of war victims and its two
additional protocols relating to the respect of human rights in times of armed conflict, of which
Burundi is a party, are applied.
b) Children in conflict with the law (art.17)
i. Administration of juvenile justice
169. The Burundian legal framework provides for a juvenile justice system based on substantive
rules and procedural rules that guarantee the protection of the rights of children in conflict with the
law. Indeed, the relevant provisions of Law No. 1/05 of 22 April 2009 revising the Penal Code are
key elements to the building of juvenile justice in Burundi. With regard to the above-mentioned
law, article 28 establishes full criminal responsibility at 18 years of age, while article 29 reduces
criminal liability to 15 years with the impossibility of sentencing children to a criminal sentence of
more than ten years. . Article 30 provides for alternative measures to criminal prosecution and
alternative measures to imprisonment.
170. Moreover, with a view to putting into practice the Penal Code on the establishment of
alternative measures to the deprivation of liberty, an ordinance laying down the conditions for the
implementation of community service, particularly for minors, eas released in January 2014.
171. With regard to the criminal procedure, Law No. 1/10 of 3 March 2013 revising the Code of
Criminal Procedure enshrines the whole of Chapter VIII in the procedure followed for the
preliminary investigation, instruction, prosecution and trial of minors under eighteen years of age.
This law mainly brings the following innovations:
- compulsory legal assistance for children during all phases of the proceedings;
- Compulsory assistance of the child by parents or relatives;
44
Review of progress on the human rights situation since 2008 (the year of submission of the Universal Periodic
Review) until 2012, p. 6 p.16
39