Echuya Batwa, commonly known as Batwa pygmies, are the most vulnerable, marginalized, voiceless and endangered group of people around Echuya Forest Reserve in Kisoro and Kabale Districts of South-Western part of Uganda.

The Echuya is located in the Albertine Rift region recognised as an important eco-region. The Batwa are believed to have migrated from the Ituri Forest of the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) in search of wild animals (game meat), hence the name Kisoro, literally meaning “the area occupied by wild animals”.

The Batwa live in small huts mainly made from sticks and grass. The word Pygmy is originally derived from a Greek term – allegedly for the distance between the wrist and the elbow – and when early Greek writers were talking about a mythical race of small people they called them Pygmies.