Country

Uganda

Region

Eastern Africa

Language

Rukiga

• 

  IMPACT

  • Part of this film was aired on Ugandan television as well as being screened to local and national politicians, donors and NGOs.
  • The Batwa participants strongly emphasised that this was their own film, made by them and representing their point of view.
  • The local District Commissioner made strong rights supporting statements on camera at the opening event.
  • The local government screening led to a debate about Batwa issues, and a pledge to immediately improve some of the hygiene problems faced by the urban living Batwa.
  • The film helped raise a small grant from the UNDP for a local Batwa organisation.
• 

  ACT

  • The Batwa Development Program is an organization operated by the Batwa Pygmies of Southwestern Uganda. Click here to visit their website.
  • Click here to read a good news update from May 2010 about how the Ugandan Batwa met with government leaders in Kampala.
  • Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) advocates an alternative vision of how forests should be managed and controlled, based on respect for the rights of the peoples who know them best. You can visit their site and support their work by clicking here.
  • If you have been moved by this video, why not arrange a screening in your community, school, college, work place? Contact us to find out more.
     
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• Description

  'Voice of the Batwa' was planned and filmed by members of the Batwa people during a Participatory Video project facilitated by InsightShare. Part of this film was aired on Ugandan television as well as being screened to local and national politicians, donors and NGOs.

  The Batwa are an indigenous people of the Great Lakes region of tropical Africa. Formerly hunter-gatherers, they were expelled from their ancestral forests to make way for conservation and tourism projects. They experience extreme racial discrimination from their neighbours as well as extreme poverty, landlessness and unequal access to education and healthcare. The Batwa do not benefit from mechanisms to channel tourist money into local community development projects.

  This film was created to raise awareness among Ugandan policy makers and the world at large of the shocking plight of the Batwa people since their forced eviction from their ancestral hunting grounds in 1992.

  This project was supported by the UNDP Small Grants Programme and Human Rights Programme with assistance from the Ugandan Ministry of Finance.

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