How Batwa lost their land

Anthropologists and historians have often placed the Batwa under the broad term “pygmies”, a word that carries a painful history. Although it was originally used to describe several short-statured forest communities in Central Africa, the word has also been used to mock and belittle them.

A Batwa woman carries a baby as she walks down a ladder from a grass-thatched house constructed in a tree in Bwindi Impenetrable forest.