CENTRAL AFRICA: Africa's Indigenous Batwa Community Decries High Rate of Violence Against Women

The original inhabitants of the equatorial forests of Africa's Great Lakes region – the Batwa Indigenous community - are decrying the high rate of violence against women, says a new report.

The report, carried out in five countries of Burundi, Rwanda, Congo and Uganda highlights shocking revelations of violence against indigenous Batwa women.

The indigenous Batwa community are the first inhabitants of central Africa, but over the years they have faced discrimination, human rights abuse, marginalisation and land injustices from their governments.

The Batwa are an indigenous people traditionally inhabiting the forests of the Great Lakes region of Africa – Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They are poor and marginalised in all four countries in which they live.

But despite being the first people of central Africa, they are forced to live on the margins of society, facing daily discrimination, social and economic injustices.

According to the study, conducted by Minority Rights Group (MRG), and titled the uncounted: the hidden lives of Batwa community, says Batwa women and girls suffer multiple or intersectional forms of disadvantage and discrimination.

The MRG report is based on four research projects by local organisations; two on violence against women conducted in Uganda and Rwanda and two on girls' education conducted in Burundi and the DRC.

Of the women interviewed in Uganda, the report finds that 57 percent had been sexually abused at sometime in their lives, with 46 percent having suffered marital rape.

In somecases, the report adds that 100 percent of women admitted they had experienced some incidents of violence. “For Batwa women, the problem are doubled, including denial of education and the toll of habitual violence,” observes the report.

The study attributes the rampant violence on women on poverty and lack of proper laws to protect them from human rights abuses. The community has lost their ancestral land to mining and game reserves in all the five countries they inhabit.

“For too long, the Batwa in Uganda have been evicted from their ancestral lands,” says Penninah Zaninka of the United Organisation for Batwa Development in Uganda.

She adds that the Batwa suffer extreme poverty and their women become more vulnerable to abuse. Until there is official recognition of the problems Batwa women face, their suffering will increase, warns Zaninka.

Though the Batwa people are the original inhabitants of the equatorial forests of Africa's Great Lakes region, there are no official statistics of their population except in Uganda.

It is estimated that there are 160,000 Batwa people living in Rwanda, Burundi, the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda.

Burundi's Batwa people first lived in the central African forests, but unlike the majority of the Burundi population who own farms, they are now a people without land.

Many of the women make out a living for their families as traditional potters, others have to rent land or still live under a feudal system which requires them to return some of their profits to their landlord.

The report notes that the perception amongst Batwa women is that they suffer violence more than women in other communities. Sixty one percent of the women interviewed for the survey in Rwanda said the level of violence against Batwa women is greater than against other women.

However, the study notes that causes for the violence varied between the respondents. A majority of Batwa women in Rwanda felt that extreme poverty was the main factor for the violence.

Paul Mulindwa, an official with an International Human Rights group MRG in Uganda, says Batwa communities around the great lake region suffer from land evictions and are rarely represented in governments except in Burundi where they're effectively represented up to the senate level.

In Rwanda, Mulindwa says they're represented at lower levels (village Levels), but in Uganda and DRC none is represented in government.

However at the just concluded Rwandan general elections, for the first time, the ethnic Pygmies Batwa who represents less than 2 per cent of the population participated fully in the election.

In the past Batwa's were excluded by the other communities that consider them to be strange because of their life style. Today, certain members of the Batwa community learn pottery and how to read and write to enable them to vote.

In Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo where the research focused on Girl child education, it found out that in both these countries, Batwa boys are twice more likely to attend school than girls. While at the national level Batwa girls have half of the opportunities to go to school as girls from other communities.

The drop-out rate of Batwa girls is twice that of Batwa boys in Burundi and in the DRC only 39 percent of Batwa children attended schools.

In both countries the causes for the limited access to education of Batwa children were similar – poverty, attitude of parents towards education and early marriage.

The report recommends that governments in the region acknowledge the need for disaggregated data by gender and ethnicity.

The study proposes that governments in these regions recognise the diversity of the population and acknowledge the existence of minorities and indigenous people.