Countries urged to extend citizenship rights to "forgotten" Pygmies

Advocacy group Refugees International (RI) has called on the international donor community to encourage countries in Africa's Great Lakes region to extend citizenship rights to the Batwa or "Pygmy" people. "Batwa occupy the role of second-class citizens," RI said in a report released on Tuesday titled "Forgotten people: The Batwa 'Pygmy' of the Great Lakes region of Africa". The report details the challenges Pygmies face. These are indigenous hunter-gatherer people who initially inhabited forests in central Africa. "They lack marketable skills, having neither access to their traditional forest economy or to any public services," RI said. "Education, healthcare, land ownership and equal treatment by the justice system are all less accessible to the Batwa than the general population," RI said. "Without the availability of traditional or state resources, the Batwa become the most vulnerable and most easily exploited populations during the conflicts [in the Great Lakes region] that began in the 1990s." Among other recommendations, RI said peace and reconciliation programmes should be created, in response to the conflicts in the Great Lakes, which "take into account the need to reconcile Batwa populations with other citizens and include them in reconciliation efforts". RI said forest conservation efforts in the region should take into account the traditional guardianship role the Batwa have played and incorporate them into all current and future forest conservation efforts. "Exposure to conflict has jeopardised the Batwa way of life," RI reported. "Violent conflict has spilled into all the countries of the Great Lakes since the Rwandan genocide in 1994." In the Great Lakes, the Batwa are found in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. Outside the region, they are found in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Gabon. Refugees International also sought to correct misrepresentations of the Batwa, saying certain characterisation of the people has had devastating effects among them. "The popular perception of them as barbaric, savage, wild, uncivilised, ignorant, unclean and above all else, subhuman has seemingly legitimised their exclusion from mainstream society and left them with little support or outside resources in their current state of forced displacement," RI said. [The Refugees International report is available online at: www.refugeesinternational.org]