BUJUMBURA October 31st (ABP) – The Burundian Ombudsman, Aimée Laurentine Kanyana, opened an awareness workshop for gender focal points on Friday, October 27, 2023, on the fight against the phenomenon of harassment and abuse of authority in the workplace, in order to set up “gender focal points” in public services and ministries to eradicate those phenomena.
Mrs. Kanyana affirmed that the phenomena of harassment and abuse of authority in the workplace are a reality and constitute serious violations of human rights, endangering social cohesion, and obstructing the founding principle of Responsible and hardworking government in terms of citizen protection. She added that the Government considers those phenomena (harassment and abuse of authority) as an evil to be combated and eradicated.
Mrs. Kanyana indicated that the institution she chairs organized that workshop, after receiving complaints announcing the above-mentioned phenomena, to see the state of affairs and to define the orientations for the development of the national policy of fight against harassment and abuse of authority in the workplace in Burundi.
Ombudsman Kanyana, in that way, showed the actions of moral harassment of the worker which are linked to a deterioration of his working conditions or likely to infringe his rights or his dignity, to alter his physical or mental health, or compromise his professional future.
According to her, the intern, the worker or the person in training are all subject to the phenomenon of harassment. She specified that the victims of the latter may be sanctioned with a direct or indirect discriminatory measure, in particular in matters of remuneration, training, reclassification, assignment, qualification, professional promotion, transfer or renewal of employment contract; after having refused acts of moral or sexual harassment, or having witnessed such acts or having reported them. It is in that context that the ombudsman institution for which she is responsible wanted to make its contribution to confronting those types of phenomena, she concluded.
In his welcoming remarks, the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Employment, Vénuste Niyongabo also indicated that the phenomenon of harassment and abuse of authority in the workplace constitutes a great challenge to raise. He added that the fight against it concerns everyone and requires the synergy of all actors in the world of work for its eradication. He specified that the phenomenon of harassment and abuse of authority is observed in households, towards domestic workers, in businesses and in schools, to name but a few.
Minister Niyongabo took that opportunity to call on those concerned to implement the national policy to combat the phenomenon of harassment and abuse of authority to build a better Burundi. He meant that the practice of those kinds of phenomena in the workplace violates the principles and rights that guide the world of work in general.
The delegate of the resident representative of the United Nations Development Program in Burundi (UNDP), indicated that, in its mandate to support sustainable human development and in accordance with the United Nations policy on “Zero Tolerance for any form of Harassment in the Workplace”, UNDP agreed to support the noble initiative of formulating the said policy and spoke that violence and harassment in the workplace is a crucial and persistent challenge faced by businesses everywhere. the world. The latter currently constitutes a global concern, which led the International Labour Organization (ILO) to adopt the International Labour Convention and its recommendation on violence and harassment in 2019, he underlined.
The UNDP representative in Burundi also reported that a survey conducted by the ILO globally in 2021 on lived experiences revealed that more than one in five people, for those who are employed, reported having experienced violence or harassment in the workplace, whether physical, psychological or sexual. She indicated that that is a serious problem which requires adequate remedies for the implementation of the Government’s vision of a “Burundi emerging in 2040 and developed in 2060”, she said.
Various interventions were made by the participants where they showed that the government should put in place monitoring mechanisms to eradicate those abuses, among other things the protection of gender focal points and denouncers, but also the establishment of the toll-free number to report the suspects.
Note that that workshop was organized by the institution of the Burundian ombudsman in collaboration with the Ministry of Civil Service, Labour and Employment, with the support of UNDP.