Nairobi - Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza's insistence on running for a third term has already sparked deadly protests at home and now threatens to destabilise an already volatile region.
Analysts warn that without an urgent solution, the current street protests in Burundi could escalate into a regional crisis that spreads far beyond the small central African country, including fears it might draw in neighbouring Rwanda, and create far more refugees than the 50,000 who have already fled.
Beyond the demonstrations in Bujumbura, the bigger concern is that the current crisis could jeopardise the Arusha Agreement, which brought peace to Burundi after years of civil war.
The deal included an ethnic power-sharing formula that helped end fighting that raged from 1993 to 2006 between the mostly Tutsi army and predominately Hutu rebel groups.
"The return to violence would not only end the peace progressively restored since the Arusha agreement, it would also have destabilising consequences in the region and mark a failure in peace building," the International Crisis Group said in a report issued before the protests began.
"The country's relapse into violence would be a pitiful outcome for the guarantors of the Arusha agreement and could fuel regional crisis."
AFP
