From September 2019 to February 2022, Search implemented, with support from the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, the program “Tubiri Tuvurana Ubupfu: Strengthening Trust and Positive Relations Between Youth and Police in Burundi.”
The “Tubiri Tuvurana Ubupfu” project’s main aim was to strengthen trust and positive relationships between youth and police to prevent violence before, during and after the 2020 electoral cycle. To this effect, the project set out to transform the relationship between the two groups by encouraging constructive and humanizing interactions, and also with other members of the community. The project intended, in particular, to harness the potential of mixed security committees.
The project came as a bridge that connected people with different perceptions and opinions. It positively shifted some patterns of collaboration between the target groups, which opened up a space for information sharing, in particular between youth and the mixed security committees on one side, and mixed security committees and the police on the other. The proportion of youth and police who can mention at least two incentive in engaging in dialogue to prevent violence significantly increase by the endline, by more than 30 percentage points. Community dialogues appear in particular to have helped some people to open their minds and change their behavior, with a significant increase in respondents who say they have discussed sensitive topics with the police in a safe space in the last 6 months (94% by the endline). The project presents several elements of sustainability, including youth champions, who are continuing to act as mediators within their communities, and a contribution to the institutionalization of community policing, as the police are currently considering integrating Common Ground Approach modules in their training program for police officers.
