Pygmies demand greater access to land, education

Representatives of the Batwa or "Pygmy" people from four countries in the Great Lakes region have asked their governments to urgently seek ways of guaranteeing their people's greater access to land and education. "Batwa children do not attend school or simply give up going to school because their parents do not have land to cultivate," Liberate Nicayenzi, the only Burundian member of parliament from the Batwa community, told a conference on the social integration of the Batwa that opened on Monday in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura. The Batwa are indigenous hunter-gatherer people who initially inhabited forests in central Africa. In the Great Lakes, they are found in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda. Outside the region, they are found in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Gabon and the Republic of Congo. Participants in the Bujumbura conference, which ends on Thursday, are drawn from Burundi, Rwanda, the DRC and Uganda. The conference was organised by an association championing the promotion of pygmies rights in Burundi, the Unissons pour la promotion des Batwa (Uniproba), in collaboration with the UK-based Minority Rights Group International. Nicayenzi, who is also the legal representative of Uniproba, told IRIN on Monday that the conference was organised to pressure governments in the region to resolve the Batwa's marginalisation. "Batwa children say they cannot go to school when they are hungry," Nicayenzi said. "The problem of land hinders school attendance by Batwa children. We urge the government to set up a clear programme of land distribution to Batwa families who do not own land." She added that Burundian lacked an elaborate programme for the education of Batwa children. However, she said that although some improvement had been recorded in the education of the Batwa, much more still remained to be done. "Today we have four Batwa students at the University of Burundi, 100 in secondary schools and 3,000 in primary schools," she said. "This is a step towards the development and social integration of Batwa, but more efforts are needed." At the end of the regional conference, the participants are scheduled to make recommendations to their respective governments on the social integration of the Batwa.