Nelson Byaruhanga on the threat to life and climate by big oil exploitation
From racism and discrimination in the work camps by foreign expatriates and managers who tear up sick leave requests and deny indigenous casual workers medical care to native young women, fearing to conceive pregnancies because they will lose their jobs when they go for maternity leave. Then, a repressive political regime that sues its own citizens and forces them to accept peanuts in compensation for their lands and a shrinking rights space where activists, for raising their voices against environmental vandalism, are harassed and accused to be agents of foreign interests by the State.
In the Uganda’s north of the Albertine rift, a $10 billion Tilenga Oil and Gas Project operated by the French Oil giant TotalEnergies on behalf of the Joint Ventures Partners (JVPs), the China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) and the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) is being developed at the detriment of the indigenous communities.
TotalEnergies’ Environmental and Social Impact Assessment report (ESIA) decided that the classification of any group in the Tilenga area as indigenous peoples in the context of International Finance Corporation was not considered applicable. Yet article 1.2 of the ILO Convention 169 provides that self-identification as indigenous is a fundamental criterion for determining the group to which the provision of ILO apply.
While Uganda is not a party to the ILO convention and her laws define indigenous groups for purposes of determining citizenship, article 60 of the Banjul Charter to which Uganda is a party, gives the African Commission the mandate to have recourse to international law principles on Human and People’s rights. Uganda is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. So the country has a duty to honour the rights granted to indigenous groups under twin article 1 of the ICCPR and ICESCR as well as article 27 of the ICCPR.
At the Tilenga Industrial area located on 318 hectares of land in Kasinyi village, Buliisa district, a human buffer zone is needed to provide protection to health care functions and counter the disruption caused by the industry and the threat posed by fatal health pollutants. Over two thousand people, the majority of whom are children and women, live in these neighbourhood’s.
In these villages, when it rains, it pours sorrow. Homes are submerged, people displaced, clean water sources contaminated, roads blocked, and properties washed away by water discharge from the industrial facility that finds its way through the catchment area of a seasonal river called Kamukule into Lake Albert causing fear for the aquatic life.
The Tilenga Industrial area will handle a combined 5.8 billion barrels of oil and emit an estimated 23 million metric tons of carbon over the next 28 years. Museveni’s regime, using the compulsory land acquisition policy has acquired the needed 1,183 hectares of land for the support infrastructures including, the water abstraction system that will drain 159,700,000 cubic meters of water from Lake Albert for 28 years, 31 well pads, support bases, camps, access roads, 170km network of buried flowlines and the 96km feeder pipeline connecting the Industrial area to the 1,443 km East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).
Due to the low compensations for these lands, a destroyed heritage of communal living, total destruction of native environment, intensified land violence and fear for the future oil disasters such as spills especially for people living close to the oil pads, pipelines and industrial area, voluntary displacement of people is happening under the government watch.
The Country’s President, Yoweri Museveni who was recently endorsed for the 2026 general elections by his son and the national army commander, General Muhoozi, during the national independence celebration on October 9, 2024, told the country that oil revenues would be used to revamp the country’s ailing railway system and improve on the transport infrastructure while his country loses. With the first oil expected in 2025, Uganda anticipates earning annual revenues exceeding $1 billion from Tilenga and Kingfisher flagship Upstream Petroleum Production projects.
However, the opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine who is very popular among Uganda youth believes that the 82 year old president who has been in power for four decades, is craving to use the oil revenue to militarize the country and consolidate his dictatorship. Mr. Wine in a media interview at his home in September 2024 declared his candidacy to contest 1962 Museveni in 2026.