SUMMARY REPORT OF THE PLENARY SESSION OF SEPTEMBER 3, 2025

In the year 2025, on the third day of September, senators gathered in the Senate Chamber in Gitega for the 7^th plenary session of the 7^th legislature under the leadership of the Right Honourable Gervais NDIRAKOBUCA, Speaker of the Senate, to consider and adopt the Draft Amendment to the Senate Rules of Procedure of August 5, 2025. This session was attended by 11 senators and began, as usual, with a prayer at 9:41 a.m.

Opening the session, the Speaker of the Senate first welcomed the senators present and then invited the Chair of the Standing Committee on Institutional, Legal, Administrative, Decentralization, Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, and Monitoring of Representativeness in Institutions, which had been seized of the matter, to present the reasons for amending the aforementioned draft.

In his presentation, Honourable Berchmans NZOYIHAYA stated that, as provided for in Article 187 of the Constitution, during the first inaugural session of the 7^th Legislature of the Senate of Burundi, the plenary assembly of the Senate adopted, on August 4, 2025, a draft of the Senate’s Rules of Procedure, which was declared constitutional on August 5, 2025.

Thus, during its implementation, it became clear that there are provisions relating to the functioning of the Senate which should not be included in the Rules of Procedure. Also, they were not in accordance with the principle of hierarchy that guides a public administration. It was therefore in the interest of lightening the Internal Regulations and aligning all Senate officials under the same hierarchy that it proved essential to amend them in order to abandon the cabinet-general secretariat dichotomy. Moreover, in most Legislative Assemblies around the world, the highest non-elected official is called the Secretary General.

Furthermore, Article 23 of the Rules of Procedure currently being amended provided for expert offices to support committee work. However, after noting the expertise of the members of the Committee Service, expert offices are not necessary. It was decided to strengthen the Committee Service to cushion the impact of the decrease in number of senators following the promulgation of Organic Law No. 1/05 of 16/03/2023 determining and delimiting the provinces, communes, zones, villages, and quarters of the Republic of Burundi.

However, the provisions relating to the administration and functioning of the Senate contained overlaps. The amendment of Article 146 and the deletion of Articles 147, 148, 149, and 150 of the Rules of Procedure currently being amended are in line with this logic. These overlaps will be corrected by an internal instruction from the Speaker of the Senate regarding the organization and functioning of the Senate administration, he concluded.

At the end of the presentation, the session continued with the analysis of the amendments proposed by the committee. After a thorough analysis of these amendments, the draft amendment to the Rules of Procedure was put to a vote and unanimously adopted by the 13 voting senators, including 11 present and 2 proxies.

The session, which took place in a climate of perfect harmony, was concluded at 1:31 p.m. with a prayer.