2023-07-10 10:20:25
Food insecurity, children dropping out of school, impoverishment of households… Beyond the “devastating” effects on the environment, the NGO Human Rights Watch warns, in a report, of the dangers of the TotalEnergies pipeline megaproject in Uganda and asks for it to stop. She denounces the “insufficient compensation” and late from the French company to the local populations.
Published on: 07/10/2023 – 12:20
The TotalEnergies oil megaproject in Uganda, described as a “disaster” for the population, “has devastated the livelihoods of thousands of people” and “will contribute to the global climate crisis”, deplored, Monday, July 10, Human Rights Watch ( HRW) in a report. The human rights NGO demanded that he be stopped.
TotalEnergies announced last year a 10 billion dollar investment agreement with Uganda, Tanzania and the Chinese company CNOOC, including the construction of a 1,443 kilometer oil pipeline (EACOP) linking the fields from Lake Albert in western Uganda to the Tanzanian coast on the Indian Ocean.
The project, however, has met with opposition from environmental activists and groups who believe it threatens the region’s fragile ecosystem and the people who live there.
For the human rights NGO HRW, the project “impoverishes thousands of people” and will displace more than 100,000 people. EACOP “has caused food insecurity and household debt, contributed to children dropping out of school and risks having devastating effects on the environment”, continues the NGO in a report, the result of more than 90 interviews. , including with 75 displaced families in five districts of the East African country.
Debt of the inhabitants after the delays in compensation
The oil project is “a disaster for the tens of thousands of people who lost land that provided food for their families and an income to send their children to school, and who received insufficient compensation from the part of TotalEnergies”, says in the report Felix Horne, researcher specializing in the environment at HRW, before continuing: “EACOP is also a disaster for the planet and the project should not be completed”.
Read alsoTotalEnergies megaprojects: Ugandans seek compensation in French justice
Several farmers, interviewed by HRW, say they had to wait years for compensation and had gone into debt.
“They come here promising us everything”
Some villagers said they were made to sign compensation agreements in English, a language they could not read, while others also told researchers that “the presence of government and security at public meetings has helped create an aura of intimidation,” points out HRW.
“They come here promising us everything,” a resident told HRW. “We believed them. Now we are landless, the compensation money is gone, the fields we have left are flooded and dust fills the air.”
TotalEnergies says it offered fair compensation
In a response sent to HRW in June, TotalEnergies said it had offered fair compensation to farmers and would “continue to pay particular attention to respecting the rights of affected communities”.
Read alsoFossil projects, “climate bombs” in full proliferation
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since 1986, has repeatedly described the project as a major economic driver in the landlocked country, despite a European Parliament resolution last year non-binding, pinning down “violations” of human rights against opponents.
At the end of June, twenty-six Ugandans and five French and Ugandan associations launched a new legal action in France to demand “compensation” from the giant TotalEnergies for the “damages” caused, according to them, by its controversial oil megaproject.
In February, the Paris court dismissed the opponents of the oil megaproject in Uganda and Tanzania, accusing the NGOs of not having sufficiently explored the path of dialogue with the oil giant before going to court.
With AFP
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