Burundi isn't France.

When the Russian Federation annexed the Crimea in eastern Ukraine, the world responded muscularly, and lost. Russia still calls the shots in the Crimea. When Rwanda descended into a genocidal civil war, the world ignored it and almost a million Rwandese died. When South Sudan descended into civil war, the half-hearted attempts to stave off disaster did not stop the displacement of  one-tenth of the population and the immiseration of millions. Now it is Burundi that is descending into civil war while the African Union, the East African Community and the United Nations sit on their hands and pray for a bolt from the blue that will stave off disaster.

Ever since Pierre Nkurunzinza rammed through a constitutional amendment that gave him a third term, and muscled his way to an electoral victory, he has been indulged by the EAC and the AU, and Burundi has slowly descended into civil war. Threats by the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into the Burundi situation have played perfectly into the anti-ICC hands of the AU and the EAC.

Mr Nkurunzinza is a bad man indulged by selfish men. He cuts the figure of a Nero who fiddles while his country burns. He does not seem to have the hold on power that Rwanda's Paul Kagame does, nor that of Yoweri Musevini of Uganda. He may have succeeded in getting the Burundi supreme court to see things his way and the Burundi parliament to rubber-stamp his selfish whim, but he has lost his country and whatever moral authority he may have had to rule. He is now in the style of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and the late Mobutu Sese-Seko of the former Zaire in that he is determined to hold onto power long after he has lost the country and the people. And because the world's institutions are unwilling to turn their attention from their wars with ISIS or in Yemen or in Afghanistan or in Ukraine, many more Burundians will die.

The East African Community has taken a very strange approach to resolving the crisis in Burundi. Leadership ought to be offered by Kenya, the most advanced democracy and economy in the regional bloc, but its president is concerned with the security of his deputy who is being tried for international crimes at the ICC and the security of his government which is being roiled by corruption allegations. Uganda and Rwanda, Burundi's closest neighbours have their own fish to fry with their interference in the affairs of the other smouldering cauldron in the Greot Lakes Region: the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose president is unsure whether he should make way for the next president or intervere to shape the next government.

When Burundi finally descends into a full-blown civil war, the entire EAC will be affected. The flow of refugees will engulf all four other EAC partner states. Economies will be upended and communities will be disrupted. But until the EAC takes a stand on the Burundi crisis, the world will watch a country burn. By the time the world comes back with their reconstruction loans and their strings-attached aid packages, it will be too late. A nation will be destroyed and we will watch as the world's leaders wring their hands and in mealy-mouthed sentences promise, "Never again!" Burundi isn't France, and the world has done a good job of reminding us.