Uganda has recently witnessed a series of student-led protests which have brought global attention to the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project. These demonstrations, spearheaded by the student branch of the StopEACOP movement, have highlighted the devastating environmental effects of the pipeline but also the willingness of the Ugandan government to violently repress those defending their lives and livelihoods against it. On September 15, four students were arrested on their way to deliver a petition to parliament.
EACOP is a joint venture between French fossil fuel giant Total Energies and the governments of Uganda and Tanzania. Aiming to transport oil extracted from Uganda’s Lake Albert oilfields to the coast of Tanzania where it can be sold to world markets, it is touted by Total as an exciting economic opportunity which will bring prosperity to those along its path. However this narrative conveniently sidesteps the very real threats the pipeline poses to the people and ecosystems living around it, which include far-reaching damages to land and livelihoods. The construction and operation of EACOP endangers water sources and disrupts agricultural activities; for communities dependent on these resources for survival, the project poses a direct threat to life. Alphonse, an engineering student and current coordinator of Students Against EACOP, conducted research as part of a university project which found thousands of people risk losing their lives if it is completed. With this in mind, he believes action is imperative: “How can anyone know this and not protest?”
The harm already done to people displaced by EACOP was highlighted in the recent People’s Health Tribunal of Shell & Total, held in May this year. Testimony givers from project-affected areas spoke of how displacement from their land, with little to no compensation, has damaged their health, livelihoods and communities. Over 118,000 people are having some or all of their land expropriated.
This loss of land has led to a “proliferation of famine, poverty and family breakage,” the speakers said. They described how Total came with promises to improve standards of living, but instead, the people affected by the project are now “landless and are the poorest in the country.” Many of these communities rely directly on agriculture, and are already witnessing the impacts of the climate crisis on their lands and lives.
These displacements and land grabs are closely reliant on the law, argues Athura Maxwell of Tasha Institute, one of the co-organizers of the Tribunal. “There are Ugandan, international and French laws favoring multinationals oil companies like Total so called investors in Africa and for most of issues associated to displacement of oil project affected persons, inadequate compensations of indigenous land and livelihood concerns, we find that the law is protecting Total by unclear courts interpretation of new laws like Duty of vigilance law in France, Law on compulsory land acquisition in Uganda,” he said while speaking about the legal dynamics of the pipeline. Alphonse agrees with him: “Total has influence everywhere in government. They have enough power to affect our laws.” Land acquisition law in Uganda means that the government can seize land—often without compensation—if they believe it to be in the “public interest” and Total has played politics to make this happen. Maxwell believes that Total is also involved in setting the (unfairly low) prices for compensation, with the government providing the perfect cover using their nebulous “public interest” legislation.
Many Ugandans, including testimony givers at the People’s Health Tribunal, have spoken of being intimidated into signing documents, and not understanding agreements which were not communicated in their Indigenous language. Both Maxwell and Alphonse also described how the Public Order Management Act limits people from gathering and protesting. “We need to ask the police for permission for a gathering, so they are stopping gatherings of affected people who try to organize together to resist the project. And then there are punishments for activists who arrange these meetings.” Supposed protective measures, such as the National Environment Management Authority and the laws against development in national parks, have all ruled in favor of Total despite their grossly inadequate social and environmental mitigation plan.
People’s Tribunals as an alternative
This deliberate failure of legal systems to protect communities from state and corporate violence has led many social movements to organize for justice outside of this system. The People’s Health Tribunal of Shell and Total, built on the long tradition of Peoples’ Tribunals worldwide, is enabling communities actively silenced by the law to share testimony, and attendees to bear witness to atrocities committed. This is crucial for documenting evidence, raising public consciousness of violence, and building resistance. Maxwell shared how Tribunals are important to counter the lies of companies like Total: “Total is running a misinformation campaign on the benefits of oil and activists are being branded as ‘anti-development liars,’ so the Tribunal was very important to open people’s eyes to the reality on the ground.”
Storytelling can be on the terms of the communities’ themselves, not the rigid requirements of courts. There can be space to share emotions, relationships with land, community connections and ancestral relationships, thus helping to document the full extent of the harm caused by extractivism. Maxwell shared how the process of collective storytelling, and the space to be heard, has “strengthened many of the testimony givers to talk without fear.”
Gustavo Rojas-Páez writes about how testimony in the form of storytelling by Indigenous communities is often rejected in courts: “Since colonial times, courts around the world have rarely questioned the violent practices of the extractive industries. In fact, they have struggled to understand claims posed by Indigenous peoples and their cosmovisions, which often entail different practices about the relationship between humanity and nature.”
People’s Tribunals such as that of Shell and Total also open up space to envisage reparative justice beyond the usually meager compensation which can be gained through formal courts. This included cleaning-up after extractive industries and restoration of land rights, but communities also emphasized self-determination and moving away from colonial, capitalist systems of extraction. Free from the hostile gaze of a justice system rigged against them, communities were able to radically reimagine a repairing of the people and the land. This vision is powerful; the demands outlined by communities in the verdict can then be taken up and used in campaigning locally and globally, it “sets a precedent and a starting point for us to campaign from.”
Strategic use of law
Despite how the law has been used to protect Total, Maxwell thinks that social movements can and should use law strategically—“we have to build strong enough facts and evidence to beat Total; build enough stories, write about what is happening on the ground, and expose their lies.”
Maxwell has been part of efforts to take Total to court in France. France has a relatively new (2017) law called Duty of Vigilance, in which a transnational corporation is obliged to ‘identify risks and prevent serious violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the health and safety of both people and the environment’ which may result from the activities of the company, their subsidiaries, contractors and suppliers both in France and abroad. Communities brought a case in October 2019 arguing that Total did not have a sufficient vigilance plan. However, instead of holding this company to account, the French courts threw out the case in February 2023 after years of delay. Meanwhile, the human and environmental rights abuses this case attempted to stop have been accelerating—”Total said we will control the flood and the dust, but the flood and the dust are now already among the people.” Now, Maxwell is part of a group taking Total to court under the same law demanding compensation for this “huge worsening in quality of life for the project affected people—we want these people who have suffered to be given remedy.”
Whilst these cases are unlikely to deliver the full visions of reparative justice outlined in initiatives like the People’s Health Tribunal, landmark cases like this can help to get much needed compensation for communities, delegitimize an industry, and open up space for further action. They are one tactic in a much wider strategy of organizing for environmental, health and racial justice.
Solidarity: What can we do?
It’s easy to feel hopeless when faced with the full scale of these atrocities as well as the immense power wielded by violent corporations. Yet hope is essential. Hope allows us to dream of a better world and therefore, much like people’s tribunals, encourages us to fight for it. There is much to fight for and many ways to contribute to this growing global resistance. Solidarity should always be the foundation of any actions supporting the fight against extractivism and to join this struggle it’s crucial to understand the experiences of communities already on the frontline. Raising awareness by discussing these issues with friends and family is also a powerful way of planting small seeds that can grow and contribute to the global ecosystem of resistance. Whilst companies like Total are immensely powerful, they can and will be defeated by a global justice movement rooted in solidarity, reparative justice and visions of a world beyond extractivism.
Sara, Maxwell and Rhiannon are all part of the People’s Health Hearing Collective, who organized the People’s Health Tribunal of Shell & Total. Alphonse is a coordinator of Students Against EACOP. Find out more about how to support and donate to Students Against EACOP: https://tinyurl.com/supportSAEACOP
Rhiannon Mihranian Osborne (she/her) is a junior doctor, researcher and organizer. Her work focuses on environmental justice, access to medicines, abolition and re-imagining public health beyond capitalism and colonialism.
Sara el-Solh (she/her) is a physician-anthropologist using health as a lens through which to radically re-envision a just world. She currently researches and organizes around issues of migration, climate and access to healthcare.
