In Uganda, Protesting an Oil Pipeline is Dangerous Work

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Activists and environmental defenders in Uganda are facing harassment, intimidation, arrests, and unlawful detention, for protesting an oil pipeline project that has devastated thousands of people’s livelihoods in Uganda and risks worsening the global climate crisis.

The East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline is one of the largest and most controversial fossil fuel projects in the world. When completed, it will include hundreds of wells, hundreds of kilometers of roads, camps and other infrastructures, and the longest heated crude oil pipeline in the world, connecting oilfields in western Uganda with the port of Tanga in eastern Tanzania.

Who is Behind it?

The project, operated by French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies, undermines global climate goals that can only be met – and the worst impacts of the climate crisis averted – if no new fossil fuel projects are undertaken.

But the pipeline’s construction presents a more immediate crisis for the 100,000-plus people in Uganda and Tanzania who live in the pipeline’s path and will lose their land for its development.

Unfair Compensation

Local groups are working to assist people, whose land has been acquired for the pipeline, to secure fair compensation from Uganda’s government. Many people have received inadequate compensation, faced pressure and harassment from local officials, or been threatened for rejecting compensation offers.

Crackdown on Activists

There has been a crackdown on activists opposing the pipeline. One environmental defender we spoke to said, “They threaten us, they close our offices. They tell us repeatedly not to work on oil.”

Organizations working near Uganda’s two oilfields are at particular risk. “There are no embassies here, we have little…media [here], there are no lawyers or big NGOs here, the UN isn’t here and no one here respects the law…it’s a small area – everyone knows who we are,” one person told us.

Because of global opposition to the pipeline, many financial institutions and insurance companies have refused to support it. The pipeline’s potentially dire consequences for the environment and human rights should inspire more to do the same.

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