OTTAWA — In the days since six Burundian students slipped away from a robotics competition in Washington, D.C. — with at least two of them making their way across the border to Canada — many have questioned what propelled the teenagers to avoid returning home.

Yet, Justine Nkurunziza is not among those who are wondering.

Like the teenagers and hundreds of other Burundians, Ms. Nkurunziza, 57, followed a well-trod path north last year into Canada, the final stop in a desperate journey to escape the violence that is racking their tiny central African nation.

“They are saved,” said Ms. Nkurunziza, the president of an election monitoring organization in Burundi, who says she was marked for assassination by government security forces. “Those young people took the opportunity to flee from the killings, just like I did.”

Since 2015, around 300,000 people have fled Burundi amid the unrest that followed a decision by the country’s president, Pierre Nkurunziza, to seek a third term in violation of constitutional term limits. (Ms. Nkurunziza is not related to the president.) Despite protests, a failed coup attempt and an election boycott by opposition parties, Mr. Nkurunziza emerged victorious in a vote that Western observers roundly criticized as rigged.