1This new issue of Cahiers de l’Afrique de l’Est follows the path opened by a previous issue on vulnerable children (46-1); it gathers some research papers presented in the workshops of Pau (2010) and Nairobi (2011) held under the French National Agency of Research program about “Child Victims, Vulnerable Children, ‘Violent’ Youth in East Africa (Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda): Realities, Perceptions and Care”. The final conclusions presented at the Conference in Kampala in November 2012 will be the subject of subsequent publications.

2These seven contributions contribute to a basic but necessary debate on the definition of “vulnerable children” and “youth”. Concerning the “vulnerable child”, the path is well marked through definitions and international standards (Orphans and Vulnerable Child-OVC) that each country adopts and singles out. Concerning the “youth”, definitions are fluctuating, from teenager to young adult, and they reveal changes in practice and perception, with significant differences between countries and societies.

4The last three communications are about youth in Burundi. By contextualizing historical, cultural and socio-anthropological changes, it reveals the acuteness of the problem of youth in Burundi. More structural than situational, this issue might also be generational, combining the universal challenges of the rise of youth and adolescence, and a specific challenge, the extension of the youth because of late marriages and the appearance of a new age group, the “young adults”. How do society and young people manage this revolution? What strategies, what behaviors, what resilience can be observed? These three communications provide nuanced answers, from the political use of young adults to innovative survival strategies, and from conflicts to the use of “traditional” family values. The Burundi case is not so different from its neighbors. All the papers raise questions on public policies that should be implemented—questions that are difficult to answer when it comes to their order of priorities and selection—in relation to children and/or young people.