How The Batwa, Rwanda’s Indigenous Forest-Dwellers, Suffer Because of Nature Conservation Schemes
Words and photographs by Katarzyna Rybarczyk
Rwanda’s national parks attract millions of tourists each year but not many of those visiting know that they have come at a high cost for the indigenous Batwa people.
Evicted from their ancestral lands to enable the creation of nature reserves, the Batwa have been left marginalised, landless, and forgotten. To investigate the long-term impacts of conservation policies on this indigenous community, I recently travelled to Rwanda’s Musanze district.
There, I observed firsthand that their plight highlights the urgent need to balance environmental protection with indigenous rights. And, it raises a question about how conservation efforts can be made more inclusive.
So how did it all start?
Traditionally, the Batwa, comprising less than 1% of Rwanda’s population, were forest-dwellers, living the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and relying on forests for food, livelihood, and identity. However, as Rwanda intensified its nature conservation initiatives between the 1970s and 1990s, the Batwa gradually faced full eviction from the forests they inhabited.
Now, they live scattered around the country on the outskirts of towns like Musanze that I visited. These forced relocations were, for the most part, conducted with very little compensation and support, leaving the Batwa to fend for themselves in an outside world.
A bumpy motorcycle ride took me to a remote village where elders, who still remember how it was to live in the forest, now share the struggles of living in extreme poverty with their children and grandchildren.
What I encountered upon arrival was a community that has been stripped of its livelihoods, cultural identity, and dignity, which gives proof of the consequences of forced displacement.
“When we used to live in the forest, we had all the resources there. Since this has been taken away from us, we have been relying on begging. We used to hunt buffalos and collect honey which we could either eat or sell and make some money. Outside the forest we have limited access to these things so I am not able to provide for my family without begging for support,” one of the elders told me. “I can’t lie, right after the evictions the government looked for ways to help us. For example some people got cows and others sheep. They also assisted with shelter,” he added.
However, this aid was not enough for the evicted communities to start new lives. The assistance solved the immediate problem of group shelter and hunger but did not offer the incentives for successful integration into the outside community.
The Batwa people remain largely disadvantaged in education, for example, with some estimates indicating that up to 90 per cent of Twa adults have never been to school. This translates to widespread unemployment, high rates of temporary employment (35%) and other informal jobs (38.3%), and extremely low rates of full time employment (0%).
Healthcare access also is a critical issue. A study on the Community-Based Health Insurance (CBHI) in Rwanda, a scheme designed to help Rwandan citizens use quality healthcare services, revealed that low income and lack of education hinder Batwa participation.
This lack of support creates a stark contrast between the goals of conservation efforts and the realities of indigenous people displaced by them. The Batwa’s situation highlights the pressing need to balance environmental preservation with the protection of indigenous rights.
As the world becomes increasingly aware of ecological concerns, conservation efforts have been expanding worldwide. It goes without saying that this is largely beneficial to the environment, but sadly it sometimes neglects the communities that have traditionally inhabited these newly protected lands.
Batwa are not the only concerned group. Just on the African continent similar problems have affected the Maasai in Tanzania or the Ogiek people in Kenya.
The former have faced numerous evictions over the years due to conservation efforts aimed at protecting wildlife for tourism. According to Amnesty International, this resulted in around “70,000 people being left without access to the grazing lands that their livelihoods depended on.”
As for the Ogiek, who are one of Kenya’s last hunter-gatherer communities, they have been repeatedly displaced from the Mau Forest, their ancestral homeland, as a result of government-led conservation efforts. This has been happening “despite a 2017 ruling by an African court of human rights that acknowledged the Ogiek’s claim to the forest as well as their traditional role in preserving it,” as reported by Mongabay.
As demonstrated by these experiences, exclusionary conservation policies often displace indigenous groups, stripping them of their cultural identities, livelihoods, and access to vital resources.
Effective conservation policies should first and foremost recognize the rights of vulnerable groups. In addition to that, they should aim to integrate their knowledge and practices into ecological management rather than forcing them to leave their land.
This is particularly important as studies such as the one conducted by the World Resources Institute on how indigenous people’s rights and biodiversity overlap reveal that indigenous and community-managed lands can have better conservation outcomes than state-protected areas.
While balancing nature protection policies with indigenous communities’ rights protection is undeniably important, the Rwandan government appears to sideline this issue.
Bringing this gap is left to NGOs such as Partners for Conservation, whose mission is to save a biodiversity legacy through protection and conservation. They work closely with former forest dwellers, providing them with professional training essential for their integration into modern society.
Partners for Conservation have delivered modern weaving training courses to 66 women from former forest dwellers communities. They have also trained 135 members, including young girls who experienced early pregnancies and men, in modern sewing.
These efforts help participants earn a basic income, but such initiatives raise a deeper question: is this enough?
Conversations with the Batwa community members reveal mixed outcomes. Many of the Batwa, historically marginalized and often excluded from formal education, have few pathways to employment outside of sewing and weaving.
While these activities provide a crucial starting point for economic engagement, they are saturated industries in Rwanda amongst low-skilled labor. With supply being significantly higher than demand, the profit they bring is too low for families to live a decent quality of life.
The challenge lies not only in creating opportunities but also in ensuring those opportunities are sustainable over time and consider the unique needs of vulnerable communities. Without the government facilitating access to broader opportunities—such as vocational training in diverse fields or incentives to obtain education—the community risks remaining trapped in a cycle of economic precarity.
How can long-term harmony between nature conservation and human rights be achieved if governments fail to take the lead? This question unfortunately remains unanswered in Rwanda and beyond.
About the Author
Katarzyna Rybarczyk writes about humanitarian issues and crises in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.