From my experience, diplomacy allows disagreement. It does not suspend the obligation to respect facts. That distinction matters particularly in the Great Lakes region, where political rhetoric, ethnic narratives and competing security claims have too often produced consequences far beyond the words in which they began. Recent remarks by Burundi’s Foreign Minister, Édouard Bizimana, concerning Rwanda therefore deserve serious scrutiny. Three assertions stand out: that Rwanda is governed through ethnic politics; that hunger has become so severe that Rwandans cross into Burundi to steal crops; and that the FDLR is essentially a Rwandan pretext because it has never attacked Rwanda. These are grave allegations. They should not be answered with counter-insults. They should be tested against facts, history and the elementary logic of national security. Noblesse obliges say French people and I have no intention to translate it in English. Those allegations also come at an unusual moment. President Évariste Ndayishimiye currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the African Union for 2026. Burundi therefore carries responsibilities extending beyond its bilateral disagreements with Rwanda. The words of its Foreign Minister inevitably invite a broader question: are such statements compatible with the restraint, consistency and continental responsibility expected from the government whose President currently chairs the African Union? Rwanda and the allegation of ethnic governance The claim that Rwanda is governed through ethnicity is particularly serious because it touches the most dangerous fault line in Rwanda’s modern history. Colonial rule did not invent every social distinction that existed in pre-colonial Rwanda, but it racialised and institutionalised them. Identity became progressively embedded in administration, education and political opportunity. After independence, ethnic discrimination became deeply entangled with state power, exclusion and recurrent violence. The process culminated, through increasingly extremist politics, in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Post-genocide Rwanda deliberately chose a different constitutional direction. One may debate Rwanda’s governance model. One may criticise particular policies, political institutions or decisions. No state should place itself beyond scrutiny. But saying that Rwanda is governed through ethnic politics is not merely criticism. It is a factual assertion. Where, then, is the evidence? Which political parties are legally constituted as “imposed” ethnic Hutu, Tutsi or Twa organisations? Which ministries are distributed according to ethnic quotas? Which electoral constituencies are organised according to ethnicity? Which constitutional provisions allocate political power between ethnic communities? Rwanda’s constitutional framework in fact moves in the opposite direction. It rejects political organisations based on race, ethnic group, tribe, clan, region or other divisions capable of producing discrimination. Minister Bizimana is entitled to criticise that model. But if he alleges that an ethnic system operates behind it, the burden is upon him to demonstrate how. This is more than an academic argument. Senior officials in the Great Lakes should understand the danger of casually ethnicising political disputes. Our region knows what can happen when governments cease to be discussed as governments and are instead presented as expressions of ethnic communities inherited from colonialists who strategically wanted to divide us to better rule us. Those times are behind us and for ever as far as Rwanda is concerned. The language we legitimise today can become the politics we confront tomorrow. Hunger should not become diplomatic ammunition The second assertion, that Rwandans are supposedly crossing into Burundi to steal crops because they are hungry, is different but equally revealing. Like many other countries in the world, Rwanda has food-security challenges. It has poverty, nutritional problems and communities vulnerable to climatic and economic shocks. These are legitimate development concerns. But there is a considerable distance between acknowledging food insecurity and claiming that hunger is driving Rwandans across the border to steal Burundian crops. If Burundian authorities have documented such a phenomenon, they should publish the evidence. How many cases? In which communes? Over what period? How many arrests or complaints? What do border and local-government records establish? Individual criminal incidents if any, cannot simply be converted into a diagnosis of an entire country. There is also something regrettable about using poverty to humiliate another African population. Rwandans and Burundians have crossed their shared frontier for generations—for trade, work, family, refuge and opportunity. Both countries have experienced periods when their citizens sought safety or livelihoods across borders. If people steal crops, apply the law. If there is a genuine cross-border problem, establish a bilateral mechanism to address it. But hunger should not become diplomatic ammunition. African dignity cannot mean demanding respect from the outside world while using the economic vulnerability of fellow Africans as an instrument of political ridicule. The FDLR cannot be erased by declaration The third allegation is far more consequential. To describe the FDLR as essentially a Rwandan pretext because it supposedly has never attacked Rwanda is historically and strategically untenable. The FDLR did not appear from nowhere. Its origins lie in the political and military structures that developed after elements of the former Rwandan armed forces and militias associated with the genocidal regime fled into Zaire following the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Those structures subsequently reorganised under different names and configurations. More importantly, Rwanda is not the only actor that regards the FDLR as a serious armed organisation. The United Nations Security Council has sanctioned the FDLR and its leaders for years. Its sanctions documentation associates the organisation with killings, attacks against civilians, sexual violence, forced displacement and other grave abuses in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. And this is not merely historical documentation. In July 2026, the Security Council sanctions machinery designated additional senior FDLR figures, including Sébastien Uwimbabazi, identified as a senior intelligence official, and Gustave Kubwayo, identified as a senior FDLR-FOCA commander. This produces a question Minister Bizimana’s argument cannot easily answer: If the FDLR is simply a Rwandan pretext, why is the United Nations Security Council still sanctioning senior FDLR leaders in 2026? There is another important point. The FDLR question does not belong exclusively to Rwanda. Congolese civilians have suffered from its activities. An organisation accused internationally of killings, sexual violence and displacement remains a Congolese security and human-rights problem irrespective of one’s position toward Kigali. Dismissing the FDLR therefore risks dismissing not only Rwanda’s security concerns but the documented suffering of Congolese communities. Must a country first be attacked? The Minister’s reasoning raises an even more fundamental security question. Must Rwanda wait until an armed organisation successfully attacks its territory before it is entitled to regard that organisation as a threat? No responsible state operates according to such a doctrine. Internal and external threats are assessed through capability, intention, proximity, ideology, organisation, operational history and alliances. Preventive security exists precisely because governments are responsible for protecting populations before an attack succeeds. Imagine an armed organisation hostile to Burundi positioned across its border, maintaining military structures, recruiting combatants and articulating objectives against the Burundian state. Would Bujumbura say: “They have not attacked us recently, therefore they are not a threat”? Of course not. Indeed, Burundi itself insists upon the legitimacy of its security concerns regarding armed organisations and instability beyond its borders. Its concerns regarding RED-Tabara are a case in point. Burundi is entitled to those concerns. But so is Rwanda. One state cannot claim the sovereign authority to identify threats to itself while claiming the authority to determine which threats its neighbour is permitted to recognise. Put simply: Burundi cannot determine what threatens Burundi and also determine what threatens Rwanda. That is not sovereign equality. The additional burden of African Union leadership This controversy would already be serious as a bilateral matter. In 2026, however, it carries an additional continental dimension. President Évariste Ndayishimiye assumed the rotating chairmanship of the African Union in February this year. That does not transform every statement by a Burundian official into an African Union position. The distinction is important. The AU has its own institutions and procedures, and Burundi’s national foreign policy does not automatically become AU policy. Nor should President Ndayishimiye automatically be personally attributed every formulation used by his Foreign Minister. But neither can the chairmanship be treated as irrelevant. A country whose President chairs the African Union carries an additional expectation of restraint and credibility, particularly when dealing with another member state and particularly when the dispute concerns one of Africa’s most dangerous security theatres. The African Union’s Constitutive Act affirms the sovereign equality of member states, peaceful resolution of conflicts, non-interference, peaceful coexistence and the right of member states to live in peace and security. Those principles are directly relevant here. When the Foreign Minister of the country currently holding the AU chairmanship characterises the political order of another member state in ethnic terms, that matters. When he makes sweeping claims about the poverty of its population, that matters. And when he dismisses that country’s concern about an armed organisation still subject to United Nations sanctions, that matters. The question is not whether Burundi must agree with Rwanda. It need not. The question is whether Burundi can credibly exercise continental leadership while applying one standard to its own security concerns and another to those of a neighbouring AU member state. Leadership creates a higher burden of consistency, not a greater privilege to accuse. President Ndayishimiye has an opportunity President Ndayishimiye therefore faces an opportunity larger than this controversy. Burundi’s AU chairmanship could demonstrate that a Great Lakes state can rise above the region’s entrenched patterns of accusation and counter-accusation. That does not require abandoning Burundi’s national interests. It requires recognising that continental leadership demands discipline in how those interests are articulated. Burundi can demand evidence regarding allegations of support for RED-Tabara. Rwanda can demand action regarding the FDLR. The DRC can demand respect for its sovereignty and territorial integrity as all other countries can. All allegations of state support to armed organisations should be investigated according to evidence. What cannot sustain peace is a system in which every government insists that its own fears are legitimate while declaring its neighbour’s fears fictitious. That has been one of the Great Lakes region’s enduring failures. Africa must practice the sovereignty it demands There is a broader African principle at stake. African states rightly object when external powers presume to define Africa’s security interests for Africans. We insist that sovereignty matters and that African states are not passive objects of international politics. But sovereignty must also be respected between Africans. We cannot reject paternalism from outside the continent while practising it toward neighbouring states. Rwanda cannot determine Burundi’s legitimate security concerns. Burundi cannot determine Rwanda’s. The DRC cannot simply disregard threats emanating from its territory against neighbours, just as neighbouring countries cannot disregard Congolese sovereignty. This is why the Great Lakes requires reciprocal security rather than competitive insecurity. No durable settlement will emerge while governments tolerate armed groups useful to themselves but demand the elimination of armed groups threatening them. There cannot be acceptable and unacceptable proxies according to political convenience. The principle must be simple: no African state’s territory should serve as a sanctuary for armed organisations threatening another African state. Heads of States signed such a pact in Nairobi over twenty years ago. That principle should apply equally. Facts must come before rhetoric Burundian Minister Bizimana is entitled to disagree with Rwanda. He is entitled to criticise its government and defend Burundi’s interests vigorously. But grave allegations carry a burden of proof. If Rwanda is governed through ethnic politics, show the institutional evidence. If Rwandans are crossing into Burundi in significant numbers because hunger forces them to steal crops, produce the evidence. If the FDLR is merely a Rwandan pretext, explain why the United Nations continues in 2026 to sanction its senior figures and document its role in violence and insecurity in eastern Congo. Accords call for its neutralisation. And if Burundi’s security concerns regarding armed actors outside its territory are legitimate, explain why Rwanda should be denied the same principle. These are questions of evidence, consistency and sovereignty. They are also questions of leadership. Burundi’s chairmanship of the African Union should be an achievement for Burundi and for the Great Lakes region. But continental leadership is not merely about occupying the chair. It is about the responsibility that comes with it. Our region has suffered enough from ethnic manipulation, armed proxies, selective history and competing narratives presented as unquestionable truths. Africa should expect something better from those entrusted with continental leadership: restraint without weakness, sovereignty without double standards, and disagreement without abandoning facts. Burundi has legitimate security interests. So does the Democratic Republic of Congo. And so does Rwanda. Recognising the security and sovereignty of one should never require denying the security and sovereignty of another. For a country presently entrusted with the chairmanship of the African Union, that principle should be particularly difficult to forget.
