© Eberhard Riedel, "Batua Pygmy Elder, 2009."

The Batua are among the oldest inhabitants of Africa. Many Batua groups fled from the war in Congo into western Uganda, but were displaced again when their communal lands in the Ituri Rain Forest were declared National Parks. The Batua remain without basic human rights and suffer racial discrimination from neighboring tribes. Access to food and healthcare for these hunter-gatherer forest people remains a serious problem, because the resources in their traditional forest lands are now off limits to them.