The National Assembly met in ordinary session on Wednesday, September 28, 2022 to analyze and adopt two draft laws relating successively to the status of non-commissioned officers and officers of the National Defense Force of Burundi.
These two regulations are governed respectively by Law N°1/20 and Law N°1/21 of December 31, 2010.
In 2007, the National Defense Force was given an organic law, namely Organic Law No. 1/0 of February 20, 2017 on the missions, organization, composition, training, conditions of service and functioning of the Burundi National Defense Force.
This made it necessary to draft two new bills for the two regulations in order to comply with the requirements of the organic law and to adapt them to the professional and social considerations of the moment.

While the bills were being adopted at the government level, Burundi adopted a new constitution in June 2018, which meant that the 2017 organic law had to be revised. Thus, it was necessary to comply with the requirements of the 2018 fundamental law.
At this opportunity, the command introduced innovations coming from the new organic law with adjustments to some provisions.

The Minister of National Defense and Veterans Affairs, who came to provide clarifications, illustrated the major innovations bringing advantages:
  Professionalize career management;
  Support the bereaved family by granting a death allowance of twelve months’ gross salary to the deceased officer’s legal successors and granting funeral expenses to the retired officer and his/her spouse and under age children;
  On the basis of the welfare nature of accommodation, to allow the family of the officer on remand to continue to benefit from an accommodation allowance, which is however suspended after conviction at the first degree;
 Forbidding inter-category marriage, marriage with a foreign national and marriage before two years of service in a unit;
 Correcting the pyramid of ranks, the time limits for advancement to the higher rank have been revised upwards with a minimum and maximum range;
 Upon request by the person concerned and accepted by the Chief of the BNDF, the officer at the end of his career may be admitted to serve in the Reserve Force and Development Support (FRAD in French) for a period not exceeding two years;
 An officer who is reported missing during operations or attacks will be entitled to full payment for twelve months and a death allowance after that period;
 To grant legal and judicial assistance to an officer prosecuted for acts arising from the normal exercise of his duties;
 To allow the officer to be affiliated to the various approved social security institutes and organizations;
 The specific regulatory text concerning the treatment of teaching officers in academic courses is based on the concern to harmonize salaries with the teaching bodies of other universities.

After deep analysis and rich exchanges, the National Assembly adopted the bill on the status of officers of the Burundi National Defense Force with 98 yes votes, 3 abstentions and 0 no votes, while the bill on the status of non-commissioned officers was voted at a 100%.