NGO reports ‘human rights disaster’ at Uganda oil project

A general view of the oil rig for the Kingfisher development area in Kikuube district on 24 January 2023. (Stuart Tibaweswa / AFP)

The oil project in Uganda, co-owned by TotalEnergies and
CNOOC, is reported to involve sexual violence, forced evictions, and
environmental damage, according to Climate Rights International (CRI).Local residents have faced forced evictions, threats, and
intimidation, with inadequate compensation for their land.Numerous women have reported sexual violence by soldiers
and oil company employees.

A massive oil project in Uganda co-owned by French group
TotalEnergies and China’s CNOOC is mired in reports of sexual violence, forced
evictions and environmental damage, climate activists said Monday.

The $10 billion investment includes drilling for oil in the
Lake Albert area in northwestern Uganda and building a 1 443-kilometre heated
pipeline to ship the crude to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean port of Tanga.

Climate Rights International (CRI), a non-profit
organisation, interviewed dozens of local residents for a report that listed a
“Catalogue of Abuses” at the Kingfisher project.

“It is appalling that a project that is touted as
bringing prosperity to the people of Uganda is instead leaving them the victims
of violence, intimidation, and poverty,” CRI executive director Brad Adams
said in a statement.

Adams said:

The Kingfisher project, which is operated and co-owned by CNOOC and majority owned by TotalEnergies, is not only a dangerous carbon bomb but also a human rights disaster.

The report said residents of villages in the Kingfisher area
described “being forcibly evicted, often with little or no notice”,
by the army, the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF).

“Interviewees described being ordered to leave and
fleeing with what little they could carry,” the report said, adding that
homes had been emptied and, in some cases, demolished.

“Many residents told Climate Rights International that
they faced threats, coercion, and intimidation when they questioned or opposed
the acquisition of their land by CNOOC,” it said.

Families also described “pressure and
intimidation” by officials from TotalEnergies’s Ugandan subsidiary and its
subcontractors “to agree to low levels of compensation that was inadequate
to buy replacement land”.

READ | A R76bn oil pipeline creates a climate dilemma for Africa

Since CNOOC and the military’s arrival, fishing boats, the
primary economic activity in the region, that do not comply with new
regulations banning smaller vessels are regularly seized or burned by the army,
the report said.

CRI said “numerous women” reported sexual violence
resulting from “threats, intimidation, or coercion by soldiers in the
Kingfisher project area”.

It said:

Many reported that soldiers threatened them with arrest or confiscation of their fish merchandise unless they agreed to have sex with them.

The non-profit added that it also received reports of sexual
violence by “managers and superiors within oil companies operating at
Kingfisher, including one involving a CNOOC employee”.

As for environmental damage, two people who worked for China
Oilfields Services Limited, a drilling service contractor, told CRI that their
former supervisor, a Chinese national, instructed them to empty contaminated
water basins from the drilling rig directly into the lake or vacant land.

TotalEnergies has said in the past that those displaced by
the oil project have been fairly compensated and measures have been taken to
protect the environment.

Uganda’s first oil is expected to flow in 2025 and the
project has been hailed by President Yoweri Museveni as an economic boon for
the landlocked country where many live in poverty.

ADVERTISEMENT