Peace talks between the government of Burundi and the Forces nationales de liberation (FNL), the country's remaining rebel group, have began in Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam. Burundi is emerging from over a decade of civil war, which erupted in 1993 following the assassination of the country's first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, who was from the ethnic Hutu majority. Paratroopers of the then-minority, Tutsi-dominated army allegedly killed Ndadaye.

Floods have killed nine people, displaced thousands others and destroyed a cemetery in Burundi's northwestern province of Bubanza, following a week of heavy rainfall that caused two rivers to burst their banks. The government and the United Nations Mission in the country, known as ONUB, have started to provide to help the affected families and to divert the floodwaters back to the riverbeds.

Free maternal healthcare, a 15 percent salary increase for workers in the public service and the setting up of anti-corruption bodies are some of the measures Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza announced in a message to the nation on the eve of Labour Day, marked worldwide on 1 May. "Current salaries do not allow workers to make ends meet," he said in the central province of Gitega in a speech aired nationwide on state-owned Radio Burundi.

The Burundian government has given civilians in possession of weapons three weeks to register the arms or risk being arrested for illegal ownership. "They have until 5 May to register the arms they are holding," President Pierre Nkurunziza said. He commended some 3,000 people who had already handed in their weapons, saying the law on illegal ownership of arms would apply to those who did not register.