SOS Médias Burundi

Bubanza, May 13, 2025 – In Bubanza, consequences of family abandonment are becoming increasingly dramatic. Two tragic events within the space of two weeks highlight the distress into which some women are plunged, left to fend for themselves… and the children who suffer as a result.

In the urban center of Bubanza, the abandonment of households by men who have left to look for work—often never to return—ploughs women into situations of extreme precariousness. Two recent incidents illustrate this silent crisis, whose primary victims are children.

In the first case, a woman left her infant with a neighbor before disappearing without a trace. The distraught neighbor alerted the family of the child’s father. « Before leaving, she entrusted me with her baby, saying that the father had abandoned them and that she had nothing left. She told me, ‘You’ve always been good advice, find the father,' » he says. Thanks to the intervention of neighbors, the father was found. He recognized the child and began providing him with powdered milk to ensure his survival.

An unbearable tragedy in Gisovu

But the second case turned tragic. Violette Nishuye, a woman from Kabirizi village, killed her own three-year-old son. Abandoned by her husband and in psychological distress, she strangled him and then threw him into a twelve-meter-deep septic tank. The tragedy occurred on Thursday, but it was Friday morning that she herself told the police where she had left the body, wrapped in cloths. The scene, which took place in the Gisovu neighborhood, drew a large, shocked and angry crowd. Police intervention was required to prevent a lynching.

According to the chief of the Kabirizi sub-village, Violette worked as a domestic worker in Bujumbura—the commercial city where UN agencies and the central administration are concentrated—while the child lived with his grandparents. After their separation, she returned to Bubanza where she lived alone with her son. « She could have entrusted him to other mothers rather than committing the irreparable, » said a resident present at the time of the arrest.

Unsafe unions, education in jeopardy

In this region of western Burundi, so-called « illegal » marriages—unions not registered or legally recognized—are numerous. They expose women to abandonment and children to insecurity. For some mothers in a situation of separation, without moral or material support, survival becomes a daily struggle.

« Our children’s education is collapsing, » warns one resident. « Today, 10-year-old girls are bragging about having friends. We’re seeing a worrying deterioration in behavior. »

Faced with this situation, local authorities are calling for community action. The administration is urging parents to monitor their children’s education, fight against unstable unions, and strengthen the family fabric to prevent such tragedies.

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Women traders at the Bubanza market in western Burundi (SOS Médias Burundi)