Benjamin Mkapa, the former Tanzanian president mediating talks to end Burundi’s deadly crisis will meet the opposition this weekend in a bid to end the deadlock, diplomatic and opposition sources said.

Mr Mkapa is to hold talks in Brussels with members of CNARED, which groups almost all opposition parties, they said.

“We welcome the fact that the mediator will meet CNARED members in Brussels on Friday and Saturday,” the group’s spokesman Pancrace Cimpaye said from Brussels.

Western and African diplomats confirmed that Mkapa would meet with opposition figures this week.

Hundreds of people have been killed and a quarter of a million others have fled Burundi since President Pierre Nkurunziza’s controversial decision in April 2015 to run for a third term, a vote he won amid opposition boycotts in July.

Peace negotiations were held in Arusha in Tanzania in April, but CNARED was pointedly not invited.

The Burundian government refuses to sit down with key opponents whom it accuses of involvement in a failed May 2015 coup and months of deadly political violence in the central African country.

Some members of CNARED were invited to the Arusha talks individually but the organisation as a whole was kept off the list.

Spokesman Cimpaye said the group would ask that a Burundian official from the six-nation East African Community regional bloc be axed from the group of mediators as he is close to the government.

“We will then present (Mkapa) our roadmap,” Cimpaye said.

Mpaka has said he expects to convene another dialogue session in the third week of June.

“In the next two weeks, I will continue and complete the consultations with those who did not come… but who I feel might have positive contributions to make to the process,” Mpaka said.

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The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said it is concerned about the arrests, expulsions from school and injuries of students in Burundi schools, and has called for all parties involved in the political conflict in the country to fully respect the rights of children to education and to protect them from violence.

Speaking at the bi-weekly news briefing in Geneva today, UNICEF spokesperson Christophe Boulierac noted that on May 26 and 27, 334 students had been expelled from two schools in Ruziba close to Bujumbura, under the pretext of having defaced textbooks. Since then, the children had been invited to go back to school, but many had not gone back.

Following this, on June 3, several high school students between 14 and 17 years old were arrested and interrogated for similar reasons, in three different schools in the Muramvya commune, about an hour east from Bujumbura, the spokesperson said. After the incident, other students from those schools had protested in the streets against the arrests, and two of them had been injured by gunfire.

UNICEF was present on the ground and with its partners and was following developments in those cases directly, Mr. Boulierac said. The agency was deeply concerned by those incidents, which had happened in the run-up to school exams, he noted.

The spokesperson emphasized that all children in Burundi have the right to pursue their studies and to take their exams in a secure environment, adding that schools should be respected as zones where children can find peace and refuge.

Mr. Boulierac said that UNICEF is calling on all parties to immediately ensure the full respect of children’s rights to education in Burundi and their protection from violence.

More than 300 children have been in arbitrary detention in Burundi since the beginning of the crisis in April 2015, with most of them being detained in prisons for adults, in deplorable conditions, he said.

UNICEF and its partners had been continuously appealing for the release of those children, and more than 134 children have already been released to their families. Others have been moved to centres specifically dedicated to children, the spokesperson said.

About one quarter of the children going to Child-Friendly Spaces set up by UNICEF have shown signs of trauma following exposure to scenes of violence, Mr. Boulierac said.

There are more than 25,000 internally displaced people in Burundi, 58 per cent of them children. In addition, there are more than 260,000 refugees in neighbouring countries, 54 per cent of them children. Since the beginning of the crisis, 30 children have been killed, according to the spokesperson.

He also noted that another worrying element was that the national education budget in Burundi has decreased by one third and the health-care budget by more than half.

More than 1,800,000 children under 5 years old in Burundi and 500,000 pregnant women have been affected by the shortage of essential drugs.

UNICEF has stepped in to provide essential drugs to cover immediate needs, but a significant funding gap remains, Mr. Boulierac said, adding that if funding is not secured, health services for children risk being jeopardized across Burundi’s 900 health centres and 46 district hospitals.

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South Sudanese military intelligence officers collaborating with the national security service have snatched and detained at least two students at Juba University and drove them to unknown location, raising concerns for their safety since Friday, relatives and student union said.

Chan Deng Maror and Peter Angui Bol, according to the students’ union and relatives, were picked up by the military intelligence officers arrival to the university from their hostel.

The motive of the arrest remains largely unclear and no official statement has been released by the administration of the university to clarify circumstances under which the arrest was permitted within the premises of the higher learning institution.

Juba University has been one of the places within Juba where people with critical opinion about the performance of the government have been kidnapped at gunpoint by either security personnel driving tainted cars or military intelligence officers during broad day light and taken to unknown locations, where some ended up being tortured and sometimes badly beaten unconscious after being blindfolded.

Some are often held for more than a month. Others are held in locations that the government has not revealed, without access to lawyers or contact with family, putting them at increased risk of torture.

South Sudanese government under President Salva Kiir has repeatedly and violently targeted critical activists, including political opponents as a way to intimidate and suppress.

Authorities have arbitrarily detained, tortured, and otherwise ill-treated detained suspects.

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