Grantee Focus / Batwa
Batwa: The Forgotten People of Central Africa
In 2007, First Peoples made a grant to the Union of Associations for Gorillas Conservation and Community Development in East DRC (UGADEC) in conjunction with the Pygmee Integration and Development Program (PIDP) that is helping these two groups aid in the survival of the Batwa of Central Africa. You can read more about the grant here.
The Batwa (Twa) forest people (also known as Pygmies) of Central Africa are the Indigenous inhabitants of Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and live traditionally as hunter-gatherers.
According to Minority Rights Group International, there are an estimated 70,000-80,000 Batwa people living in Africa. The Batwa have a cultural distinctiveness which needs to be preserved. Batwa tradition is rich in song, dance and music, and cultural gatherings are firmly integrated in the social life of the Batwa.
The forest is another vital and integral part of the Batwa identity. Forest-based Batwa people consider themselves to be in an intimate, nurturing relationship with the forest; the forest will always be there for them and provide for their needs. The Batwa believe the forest is the source of all abundance, and this is maintained by proper sharing between people or between people and forest spirits, and by singing and dancing rituals which ensure the support of spirits to help them satisfy all of their needs. The Batwa have a wide range of specialized skills and knowledge necessary to carry out their forest-based livelihoods, including an incomparable knowledge of plants and animals, and skills in medicine, music, dance and crafts.
Today the Batwa population is rapidly decreasing. Since the 1960s, international conservation groups have joined with national governments to forcibly expel the Batwa from newly declared game parks and forest preserves. The Batwa have been evicted from their homelands and offered no compensation or alternative. Homeless, they are marginalized and pushed to the fringes of local communities. The opening of several conservation parks, including the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (331 square kilometers) and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park (33.7 square kilometers) in Uganda, succeeded in displacing the Batwa still living in those forests. In 1991, forest life essentially came to an end for the remaining Batwa. Since that time the Batwa have become second-class citizens in their own countries. They lack marketable skills, having neither access to their traditional forest economy nor to any public services. Education, healthcare, land ownership, and equal treatment by the justice system are all less accessible to the Batwa than to the general population. While other citizens are issued birth certificates and identity cards free of charge, the Batwa must undergo an involved bureaucratic process because the government does not consider them as a sector of the general population that should automatically receive rights. Without these identity cards, it is difficult to enroll in schools and receive government-funded health care, which are otherwise guaranteed to other vulnerable people in the country. Without the availability of traditional or state resources, the Batwa have become the most vulnerable and the most easily exploited population during the conflicts that began in the 1990s.
Today, the large majority of Batwa live in and around cities. Most began to produce pottery as a source of income after displacement from their forest homes. The pottery they make is used for farming and in other industries for storage and transport. Eventually, foreign producers began marketing goods that were more readily available on the market resulting in cheap plastic and metal containers replacing Batwa pottery. Without the resources of the forests and the ability to sell their once popular pottery in a highly competitive market, many Batwa now work as day laborers, servants, and tenant farmers or in other unskilled menial jobs. It is estimated that 80% of Batwa earn capital from begging. Even those who do attempt to survive in the cities face struggles due to their Indigenous ancestry. They continue to suffer ethnic prejudice, discrimination, violence, and general exclusion from society.
Faced with these threats to their physical and cultural survival, the hunter-gatherer people of Africa’s forest are beginning to organize themselves. It is no coincidence that the Twa people of the Great Lakes region who have now lost almost all of their lands and are suffering severe deprivation, were the first to set up their own organization to press for their rights to land, resources, justice and services, and to counter the deeply-rooted prejudice and discrimination they face. In 1991 a group of educated Batwa created the Association for the Promotion of Batwa (APB). APB’s aims were to defend the rights and interests of the Batwa of Rwanda, to act as an intermediary for the Batwa community in its contacts with national and local authorities, to promote the socio-economic and political development of the Batwa, with the emphasis on primary health care, education and employment and to promote Batwa culture. In January 1993, the Batwa of Rwanda represented by APB became a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO).
In 1995, the Batwa founded the Community of Indigenous Peoples of Rwanda (CAURWA) by uniting three existing Batwa organizations: the Association for the Promotion of Batwa (APB), the Association for the Global Development of the Batwa of Rwanda (ADBR) and the Association for the Protection of Unaccompanied Children in Distress (APEDE). The mobilization of the Twa acted as a catalyst for the Indigenous movement in Central Africa, spreading awareness among similar groups and informing outside agencies of Indigenous rights and concerns. Relationships are now developing between Indigenous organizations and hunter-gatherer groups across Central Africa, helping to strengthen their voices and find common ground. Despite this good work, the Batwa are still facing the issues of poverty and becoming social, economic and political outcasts.
Additional Batwa Resources |
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