Govt officials, activists disagree over oil report 

Criticism by Human Rights Watch over Uganda’s handling of the people affected by oil-related activities has been met with a strong rebuttal, with government officials saying the human rights report is littered with falsehoods.

In their report, titled Our Trust is Broken: Loss of Land and Livelihoods for Oil Development in Uganda, Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized the handling of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline project, arguing that it is a disastrous project.

Preparation works for the construction of an underground heated pipeline are underway, which will see Uganda’s crude transported over a 1,445km stretch from Hoima in the western part of the country to the Chongoleani peninsula in eastern Tanzania.

However, Human Rights Watch feels that this project should not proceed.

“EACOP has been a disaster for the tens of thousands who have lost the land that provided food for their families and an income to send their children to school, and who received too little compensation from TotalEnergies,” said Felix Horne, senior environment researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“EACOP is also a disaster for the planet and the project should not be completed.”

Human Rights Watch said it drew this conclusion after speaking to 90 people affected by the EACOP project. Uganda government officials have hit back, calling out Human Rights Watch for deliberating distorting the facts on the ground.

The government officials say they were shocked at the bias in the report even after they had accorded the officials from HRW time and information prior to the publication of the document.

“This report is biased and follows the pattern of similar attempts to discredit Uganda’s national petroleum program on grounds that are not based on available information or engagement with Ugandan institutions. Even where detailed responses are provided, such as is admitted in the HRW report, facts are ignored and replaced with a false narrative that the oil and gas developments are bad for Uganda’s national interest, pose a danger to the environment and should be defunded,” a press statement from the Petroleum Authority of Uganda, the regulator of oil activities, pointed out.

Reports of HRW’s nature cannot be taken lightly; they instill fear in financial institutions and dampen the mood among banks that had wished to lend to Uganda’s oil project.

The report comes at a time when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading authority on climate science, the International Energy Agency, and others warn that no new fossil fuel projects can be built if the world is to reach Paris Agreement goals and limit the worst impacts of climate change.

The Petroleum Authority explains that “From the project’s conception, the world’s leading experts have been working to create a project that seeks to limit impact on the environment and mitigate against the effects of climate change while also seeking to harness the significant economic opportunity that this project provides the country, which has the possibility to transform the economic futures of millions of East Africans. These aspects, and the realities of the socio-economic impacts the project brings, are unfairly ignored by the HRW report.”

This is not the first time that Uganda’s authorities have had run-ins with civil society activists. Earlier clashes have led to the delays and postponements by financial institutions to commit money to Uganda’s oil project.