Peter Uvin > Quotes

“Corruption has become a short-cut accusation, a term used by those who are angry at the system to express dissatisfaction and cast aspersions. It is a (rhetorical) weapon of the weak – all the more credible as there indeed is a lot of corruption in Burundi. This is related to what we ended the previous section with, where we said that Burundians desire ‘better people’ rather than ‘better structures.’ Corruption as described by Burundians is a ‘bad person’s’ fault – not a structural issue. Corruption, then, is in part to the masses what human rights are to the well educated. Both are ways to ‘stick it to the man,’ terms whose currency in protest and dissatisfaction is useful. Hence, more than simply accurate descriptions of a social fact, talking about these things is a political act – a way the jargon of the international community has become reappropriated in local political struggles. Given that in Burundi both corruption and human rights violations are indeed prevalent, this makes understanding these discourses very complicated.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“One of the most striking observations emerging from our research in Burundi is the way people constantly maintain some form of relations across great chasms of violence, class, abuse, and absence. People have civil relations with the murderers of their families; husbands and wives, even after many years, can reconnect and share all again; refugees and IDPs return home, solving their own land conflicts in the process. And all of this happens against a background of stunning poverty. Burundi specialists decry the level of land conflicts, involving as many as 9 percent of all households in the province of Makamba, a center of return of refugees and IDPs: in many areas, as much as 80 percent of the current population consists of people who have just returned during the last few years. But this still means that an amazing 91 percent of the population is not party to any land conflict, and this in a country where every square foot of land is a matter of life and death.5 Let’s not forget: throughout the country, this means Hutu and Tutsi are living side by side again, for they were intermingled everywhere. How, then, do people manage to such an extent to reintegrate, after a decade of war, dislocation, and poverty?”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Widows are clearly one of the most disadvantaged groups in Burundian society. We heard sad stories of widows abused by family members, ostracized by their communities, losing access to land, and living in destitution. We also heard repeated references to unmarried and married men having covert relations with widows – a way to have sexual relations with a woman without having the financial responsibility of marriage. A group of young men from the Ruhororo IDP camp explained to us, ‘sometimes men see [a euphemism for having sexual relations with] a widow in her own house, but they would not build a second house for her. Widows often have relations with married men, because they need to financially.’ Windows, financially vulnerable, are less desirable for having already been married and are not given the same level of respect as unmarried young women.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“First, I wanted to get an empirical sense of the ‘positive peace’ versus ‘negative peace’ debate. This discussion started in the late 1960s, against the backdrop of the cold war (the Vietnam War was waging then) and growing awareness of Third World poverty. Traditional peace research was under attack by a new generation of radical scholars. One of their prime complaints was that researchers focused solely on negative peace, i.e. the absence of war, uncritically elevating this to an absolute ideal. But, critics argued, peace is not simply when people or nations don’t fight each other, but when there is cooperation, trust, and respect between them. They”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“How many eventually regularize their marriage? One of my drivers did so after twenty-two years of living together and four children, so it is always possible. How many informal marriages dissolve? How many break up, but are renewed after some time? We came across many men for whom the dream of marrying persisted. This unemployed self-demobilized ex-combatant from Kamenge is typical: ‘if my situation improved I could go and live with my son and his mother: I would like that, if she is still available.’ This wish reflects a value deeply embedded in Burundian culture: fathers should do everything possible to support and raise their children, even those born outside marriage.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“    We must pardon everyone because if not, it will be like we will have to punish all the population. We must pardon everyone because all ethnic groups did bad acts. (Thirty-eight-year-old female, Nyanza-Lac)”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Little do they know how hard it is for educated young people in the city, competing against thousands of others, to find a decent job, especially if they have no connections. Some of the unhappiest people I met were young men in Bujumbura, after all these years of sacrifice, desperately looking for a job, month after month after month. Some don’t even manage to find the money to print their final theses, and will thus never get their degrees. They worked so hard, got so close, and then they still find the door closed. It is my impression that these are not people who are inclined to violence and self-destruction: they are too serious for that, they have given too much, they want to belong to the system more than anything else. And so they doggedly keep on going, asking around, trying to ingratiate themselves with more powerful people (including any foreigners they can get to meet), waiting for the day they will get a job, any job, anywhere.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Finally, I surmise that mobility is generally a symbol of well-being: when people talk about the good life or about dreams for the future, they frequently use images of mobility as well. A better life is one in which one can move around, can go to places – whether the city or abroad – and can avail oneself of opportunities that are available there. Not”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Michael Quinn Patton describes four levels of interviews, from ‘informal conversation’ (where the subject often does not even know s/he is being interviewed) to ‘closed, fixed-response interviews’ (basically questionnaires) (2002: 349). Our approach squarely falls into his second category, ‘interview guide approach,’ in which ‘topics and issues to be covered are specified in advance, in outline form; the interviewer decides sequence and wording of questions in the course of the interview.’ The interview schedule itself consisted of only twenty-one questions. All these questions sought to probe into people’s perceptions, dreams, and analysis of development, governance, the future – their future. We encouraged people to ask questions if they had any. In the rural areas, people systematically asked the same thing: What are you going to do with this? In urban areas, the questions were often more direct, sometimes a tad aggressive: So, now that you’ve asked us all these questions, what’s in it for you?”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“our interviews suggest that many rural men migrate to the city precisely to prepare for marriage. Married men who do not already work in the city rarely migrate there (it is different for those who live in towns surrounding cities).     After the death of my parents and oldest brother, I took care of the siblings. In 1997, I came to Bujumbura to do different jobs and then I managed to buy my own bike and I started doing taxi-vélo. I have done this job since 2002 and it allows me to have everything I need. I managed to build a house and I married because of my work. I also managed to buy three goats and five parcels of land to cultivate. I think that with God’s help I will manage the development I wished for when I came to the city. (Twenty-six-year-old migrant, Musaga)     I am saving some money to buy a couple of cows. After that, I will seek a wife. I am busy building a house with a tile roof in my colline to prepare my marriage. (Twenty-year-old male migrant, Musaga)”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Negative peace answers often included references to theft and criminality.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Of course, many women have suffered as well, especially during these war years: they have been raped by combatants, beaten by their husbands, left behind by their boyfriends, kicked out of school when pregnant. Some are left with little choice but prostitution, or becoming a concubine, in order to survive. In a society where violence has become omnipresent, where the law does not function, and where frustration and anger are everywhere, it is actually amazing that all this does not occur even more frequently.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“A few times in Ruhororo, for example, we heard the same image that peace means ‘you can go for a long walk and sleep where you arrive: you can knock on the door, you can sleep there and you will continue your voyage the next morning.’ This image is powerful in people’s minds. All older people I asked tell me that when they were young, this really was how things happened in Burundi until the 1980s.5 From this perspective, the mobility definition is about the restoration of the former social capital order, a sign of the desire for continuity amid dramatic change.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“    My family – my wife and my six children – was killed. I know who did it. I sometimes meet them in the street: they greet me and I greet them. I have forgiven them: they can never bring back my family, so it is the best thing to do. It is best to forget and to get on with life. (Forty-two-year-old ex-combatant, CNDD, now chef de colline, Nyanza-Lac)”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Basic needs The second-most frequent definition of peace involved basic needs and poverty. Many people told us that there exists no peace without a minimum of material well-being. As a thirty-five-year-old woman in Ruhororo told us: ‘How can you have peace if your stomach is empty?’ Indeed, the image that dominates this category is overwhelmingly the empty stomach: no peace can exist on an empty stomach. It is not only women telling us that. Here is a quote from a twenty-nine-year-old male migrant peanut seller in Musaga: ‘Peace is foremost having bread. If my children and those of my neighbors don’t cry of hunger at night I have peace in my heart.’ Different assumptions seem to underlie this statement. First, people are clearly telling us that, for them, peace means nothing without improvements in the quality of life. This confirms scholarship: as Tony Addison (2003: 1) states so well: ‘The end of war saves lives – including those of the poor who are often its main victims – but it may not deliver much if any improvement in livelihoods.’ This is confirmed by the fact that this definition seems to occur most frequently in places where there has been major suffering from the war and where there is significant social discontent that nothing has changed since the end of the war (Ruhororo; Kamenge). Second,”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“This book is based on the voices of people – primarily young people – throughout Burundi: people who have been refugees, internally displaced, dispersed, ex-combatants; in the city and the collines, Hutu and Tutsi.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“More and more Burundians have started redefining the enemy not as all people of the other ethnicity but as extremists on the other side, or even as politicians of all stripes. By”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Social peace The third-most frequent answer defined peace as ‘good social relations.’ This definition, too, is more holistic than simply about the absence of war. It privileges social relations, cohabitation, social harmony.     If we live in the same place and understand each other there will be peace. (Twenty-one-year-old woman, Busiga)     Peace is when people live together and share, they don’t kill each other but help each other. There is almost peace now, so there is hope. (Thirty-year-old male student from the interior, living”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“    There are different levels to peace. One is individual – that you are not sick and hungry. Another is mutual understanding, that there is no discrimination. My own life is at peace, but that is not the case for all of us: the individual dimension is often lacking. People are often hungry and sick, they have heavy debts and family conflicts, and that can disrupt peace. Or this twenty-five-year-old male migrant to Musaga, with no education: ‘Peace is when nobody is a victim of injustice. It is also when the entire neighborhood has enough to eat. If your neighbor doesn’t have what is needed you too become vulnerable.’ Or this twenty-nine-year-old mechanic in a better-off urban neighborhood: ‘People must have work and quit poverty: if they don’t, they start thinking badly of each other, because they feel bad themselves.’ For this minority, there is a causal link between poverty and peace.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Finally, for research like this, the quality of the translators is crucial. Kirundi is a language of allusion and proverbs: information is conveyed between the lines, hinted at, but rarely expressed directly. The challenge is also social: the translator is the front-line person who interacts with the interviewees, making the connection, maintaining the social aspects of the relation, putting people at ease.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“The ‘listen/respect’ category came back everywhere, often in a passionate manner. A few quotes will give an impression of what I put under this heading:     I would be closer to the local people and listen to them more. I would encourage freedom of expression, so that people would talk. I would make sure that the administration would have close relationships with people, so that they would not get lies. (Eighteen-year-old former child soldier, now taxi-vélo driver, Busiga)     I would listen to everyone, rich and poor. This is rarely done in Burundi (Nineteen-year-old woman, Busiga) The first thing I would do is to let the little people express themselves, listen to everyone and apply justice without bias. (Thirty-year-old female farmer, Ruhororo, Banda colline)”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“    Peace is about eating and sleeping, being able to enjoy the fruits of your work. When there is peace, you can work with a calm spirit. Even if the situation isn’t good today, you can have hope for tomorrow as long as you can invest in an activity. (Twenty-eight-year-old male farmer and mason, Nyanza-Lac)”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Marriage One of the most significant mechanisms through which gender ideology is produced and reproduced is marriage (Silberschmidt 2001: 659). In Africa, marriage is a cornerstone in the attainment of ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’; it gives one a social identity and is a crucial part of achieving adulthood (Kwesiga 2002: 58). Spinsters are generally not respected in African communities and they are an embarrassment to the family. Bachelors do not command the same social respect that married men do (Okeke 2001: 239; Kwesiga 2002: 139).”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Farming is a prison to most Burundians.8 In the countryside, especially in the north and center, people desperately want to reduce their dependence on the land. The three big ways for young people to escape poverty are education, migration, and hard work. To Burundians, secondary education is crucial: the primary if not the sole image ordinary people have when thinking about an escape from poverty is that of the fonctionnaire – not a matter of public service but of individual gain. More generally, urban migration is the crucial way by which young people try to make a decent living for themselves and their families; it is a way to prepare the conditions for marriage as well.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“At times, when we had spent some time in a particular location and word had spread about our presence, people approached us for interviews. Surprisingly, these were often very poor or vulnerable people, typically women and frequently widows, who wanted someone to listen to their story, just for once. These were some of the most amazing conversations we had.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Burundians think of survival and progress in profoundly individualistic and capitalist terms. It has become common to argue that ‘culture matters,’ and this is often taken to mean that people in developing countries lack the cultural values that favor individual advancement and innovation. Talking to ordinary people, one is struck by the constant repetition of the themes of hard work, perseverance, good planning and foresight, and, increasingly, innovation and dynamism. It is impossible to over-estimate the value of perseverance in poor people’s lives. Under all circumstances, dramatic setbacks occur for the poor; war makes this worse still. The capacity to fall and stand up again, to never give up, no matter how badly one is hurt, becomes essential for progress in life. Religion”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“All Burundians we spoke to told us they have been materially hurt by the war. The litany of theft and destruction, of forced migration, of education years lost, and of family members and friends killed, is unending. Almost nobody, it seems, whether rural or urban, rich or poor, has not seen their meager assets depleted if not eradicated entirely by the war.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“We said earlier that what Westerners call corruption was to ordinary Burundians normal. True, but there are borders – lines that can be redrawn, but which denote real differences most everyone recognizes.5 Increasingly, the types of abuse of power that many politicians and administrators engaged in went beyond what could be justified or recognized by ordinary Burundians: ‘people perceive that forms of corruption no longer rooted in a moral economy of kinship are on the rise’ (Smith 2007). Showing great deference to people of authority is a traditional norm, indeed, and it is not difficult for a Burundian farmer to enact these behaviors – the shuffling, the downcast eyes, the left hand on top of the right arm – when asking for services she would legally deserve to access as a citizen, but when that same administrator abuses his power to capture lands of her family, he has gone beyond what is mutually legitimate, and they both know it. When teachers require sex with female students to let them pass, or when employers do the same to hire, this not only runs counter to the modesty Burundians pride themselves on; it is also perceived as a clear abuse of power.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“Mobility A surprisingly large number of answers related peace to mobility. For example:     Peace is being free to move around and visit friends and family. (Twenty-four-year-old female, remote colline in Busiga)     When you can visit others there is peace. (Eighteen-year-old man, Ruhororo IDP camp)     A place where you can come and go as you wish, that is peace. (Twenty-year-old male student, Bwiza)”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi

“In the previous chapter, we argued that while democratic governance is one of the central pillars of the international post-conflict/peace-building enterprise, Burundians rarely explicitly included governance in their definition of peace. But this is not the end of the story. Our conversations reveal that matters of governance and citizenship are important to ordinary Burundians in many ways.”
― Peter Uvin, Life after Violence: A People's Story of Burundi