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@Burundi ———-
Introduction
Background: Since the end of the Belgian trusteeship in 1962, Burundi has suffered from ethnic uprisings, coups, and other societal dislocations. In a series of waves since October 1993, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled the ethnic violence between the Hutu and Tutsi factions in Burundi and have crossed into Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zaire (now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo or DROC). Since October 1996, an estimated 120,000 Burundian Hutu refugees from the DROC have been compelled to return to Burundi because of insecurity in the region. Continuing ethnic violence with the Tutsi has caused additional Hutu to flee to Tanzania, thus raising their numbers in the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) camps in that country to about 260,000. Burundian troops have joined armies from Rwanda and Uganda and Congolese Tutsi in trying to overthrow DROC President KABILA and restore security to their borders with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Geography
Location: Central Africa, east of Democratic Republic of the Congo
Geographic coordinates: 3 30 S, 30 00 E
Map references: Africa
Area:
total: 27,830 sq km
land: 25,650 sq km
water: 2,180 sq km
Area—comparative: slightly smaller than Maryland