The tiny central African nation of Burundi is struggling to put behind it 12 years of ethnic conflict that killed at least 300,000 people and displaced another million.

• Some 338,000 refugees still in neighbouring countries
• 100,000 displaced internally
• 1.2 million receiving food aid

The successful election in 2005 of a Hutu president at the head of an ethnically mixed government marked an important milestone on Burundi's long road out of war between rebels from the Hutu majority and the politically dominant Tutsi minority.

The September 2006 signing of a full ceasefire by the government and the only rebel group yet to lay down its arms removed the final obstacle to lasting peace.

But the rebels later pulled out from a truce-monitoring team over objections to parts of the agreement, and sporadic violence has dogged the peace deal ever since.

In late May, following weeks of deadly clashes, the government and the rebels jointly declared an end to hostilities to give the stalled peace deal a chance.

Meanwhile, extreme poverty, lingering ethnic divisions and crumbling infrastructure remain barriers to stability.

Drought in the north of the country has left hundreds of thousands of Burundians in need of food aid and almost 70 percent of the country's 7 million people are undernourished. Meanwhile, communities in one of Africa's most densely populated countries strain to cope with the return of tens of thousands of people uprooted by war.

Despite the challenges, many see the success of Burundi's peace process to date as a symbol of hope for stability in the volatile Great Lakes region. U.N. peacekeepers are close to pulling out, although Burundi is likely to be extremely dependent on foreign aid for years to come.

Ethnic mix
Hutu	86 percent
Tutsi	13 percent
Twa pygmies	1 percent
	(Source: NI World Guide 2005/2006)
Uprooted by conflict:
Burundian refugees in Tanzania, Congo, Rwanda, Uganda	338,000 (UNHCR, as of April 2008)
Internally displaced people	100,000 (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2006)
Health of the nation
Average life expectancy	44 (UNDP, 2004)
Infant mortality	114 per 1,000 live births (UNICEF - State of the World's Children, 2005)
HIV/AIDS prevalence in adults aged 15-49	3.3 percent (UNAIDS, 2005)
Tuberculosis	343 per 100,000 people (WHO, 2004)
Hunger
People needing food aid in 2007	1.22 million (WFP)
Percentage of undernourished population	66 percent (U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, 2002-2004 average)
Extreme poverty
Percentage of population living on less than $1 a day	54.6 percent (UNDP, 1990-2004)
Gross national income per capita	$100 (World Bank, 2005)