Identify the Batwa of Burundi

For the 8.6 million people living in Burundi [if they have identification], health care is free. There are over 87,000 Batwa in Burundi who have been displaced from their ancestral homes in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Forests. Really there are 17,000 Batwa, because 60,000 of those are estimated- they do not have ID cards. Some simple math; Batwa make up one percent of the population with 75% of those not having access to any of even the simplest rights. A report by Rwanda’s Senate Comission in 2009 says “the potters have miserable conditions among which the lack of adequate shelter, high rate of non schooling youth, the lack of the medical care, the lack of sources of income, the lack of employment, lack of farming lands and food insecurity… The malnutrition of the historically marginalized persons (potters) is at the heart of the high rate of infant mortality and by this fact potters risk of disappear completely.” “The new life was imposed on us without warning. We had no time to prepare to integrate into another life outside the forest.” Says Imelde Sabushimike, a Batwa Indigenous Fellow from UN’s Geneva Programme last year. With an identification card, a man, woman or child becomes a citizen, can attend school, be treated at the hospital, vote and even ride the bus! It cannot change stereotypes against Batwa as primitive, uncivilized and underdeveloped, or give them enough food to eat or grant them access to their homelands but it can give them recognition. Because many of them work all day just so they don't go to bed without having eaten, a $10 ID card is an luxury the majority of Burundi’s Batwa cannot even consider. We hope you can consider giving just ten dollars so one pygmy can become a citizen of Burundi and have access to the rights we all take for granted every day.

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