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- The culminating point of the crises was the assassination on 21 October 1993 of the 1st
democratically elected President, His Excellency NDADAYE Melchior Héros in Burundi. From
then on Burundi was plunged into a long civil war which lasted more than ten years and
which subsided a little with the signature of the Arusha Accord for Peace and Reconciliation
in Burundi on 28 August 2000 followed by a 36 month transition divided into two periods of
18 months each.
- During the 2nd transition period, the 2nd phase was characterized by the signature of political
Accords and of the cease fire between the Government of Burundi and the former Parties
and Armed Political Movements (PMPA), the decisive phase of which had been the signature
of the Political Accord and the Forces Technical Accord between the Government of Burundi
and the National Council for the Defence of Democracy – Democratic Defense Force (CNDDFDD), on 16 November 2003, followed by the entry of this Movement, from henceforth a
Political Party, into the Country’s Institutions (Executive, Parliament, Diplomacy, Public
Service and the Parastatals). This process was crowned by the adoption, through a
referendum, of a Constitution on the 18 March 2005, taking inspiration from the broad
steady-state principles of the Arusha Accord; and the organization of free, transparent and
democratic elections of June 2005 which established the present Institutions currently
running the country. Even the last armed political Movement, namely the Party for the
Liberation of the Hutu People – National Liberation Front (PALIPEHUTU-FNL) had laid down
their arms after the signature of the cease fire on the 6 September 2007 and joined the
Country’s Institutions.
At the economic level, Burundi had, up to 1992, enjoyed sustained economic growth with annual
growth rates estimated at 4.3% on average per year for the decade 1980-1991. The budget deficit
was less than 5% of GDP and foreign aid was 300 million dollars on average. Meanwhile the level of
inflation vacillated between 1.9% in 1992, 31.1% in 1997, 24.3% in 2000, 8.3% in 2004 and 2.7% in
2007.
From 1993, the beginning of the socio-political crisis, national wealth went down by 3% on average
per annum and in 2002, it was estimated that production had registered a cumulated reduction of
more than 20%. Development aid, predominantly humanitarian granted to Burundi fell from 300
million $ in 1992 to less than 100 million $ in 1999. Thus, at the present moment, the Burundian
economy is based essentially on agriculture and animal husbandry which still uses archaic methods