EMPTY PROMISES DOWN the LINE? a Human Rights Impact Assessment of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline

EMPTY PROMISES DOWN THE LINE? A Human Rights Impact Assessment of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline www.oxfam.org OXFAM RESEARCH PAPER – SEPTEMBER 2020 This community based human rights impact assessment highlights the social, environmental, cultural, and human rights risks of the East African Crude Oil pipeline for communities located along the proposed pipeline corridor in Uganda and Tanzania. Co-researched and produced by Global Rights Alert (GRA), Civic Response on Environment and Development (CRED), Northern Coalition for Extractives and Environment (NCEE), and Oxfam, it identifies and documents the actual and potential human rights implications of this major infrastructure project and makes recommendations to the governments and the companies to mitigate the adverse impacts, and to increase the positive impacts of this project and advocate for inclusiveness, transparency and accountability. 2 © Oxfam International September 2020 This paper was written by Andrew Bogrand, Caroline Brodeur, Devota Mbenna, Joy Akoli Atine, Clare Ayebare, Bashir Twesigye, and Scott A. Sellwood. The authors would like to thank the many people who contributed to this report, including all those community leaders who provided insights in interviews and focus group discussions. The authors appreciate the willingness and time of Total representatives, as well as government representatives in Uganda and Tanzania, to engage with the research with candor and cooperation. The authors extend special recognition to Winnie Ngabiirwe and Josiah Severre for their leadership in steering this project to completion. To Fernanda Hopenhaym, Sarah Bice, Namalie Jayasinghe, Maria Ezpeleta, Sarah Zoen, Diana Kerney, and Irit Tamir, the authors thank you for your insights and critiques as peer reviewers. At Clark University, the authors extend a special thanks to John Rogan, Marc Healy, Nicolas Geron and Florencia Sangermano for their support with spatial analysis. The authors also thank Christina Hill and Bill Powers for providing expert analyses of the draft environmental and social impact assessments of the EACOP, as well as Pasience Mlowe for assistance with analyzing Tanzanian law. Finally, the authors thank Oxfam colleagues Adella Msemwa, George Mwita, Gerald Byarugaba, Sophie Kyagulanyi, James Morrissey, Caroline Avan, Kevin May, Helen Wishart, Maria Lya Ramos, Francis Odokorach, Betty Malaki, and Jane Ocaya. This publication would not have been possible without the financial support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation Oil for Development program. It is part of a series of papers written to inform public debate on development and humanitarian policy issues. For further information on the issues raised in this paper please email [email protected] This publication is copyright but the text may be used free of charge for the purposes of advocacy, campaigning, education, and research, provided that the source is acknowledged in full. The copyright holder requests that all such use be registered with them for impact assessment purposes. For copying in any other circumstances, or for re-use in other publications, or for translation or adaptation, permission must be secured and a fee may be charged. E-mail [email protected]. The information in this publication is correct at the time of going to press. Published by Oxfam GB for Oxfam International under ISBN 978-1-78748-642-3 in September 2020. DOI: 10.21201/2020.6423 Oxfam GB, Oxfam House, John Smith Drive, Cowley, Oxford, OX4 2JY, UK. Cover photo: Mary is a farmer in Rakai, Uganda, near the border with Tanzania, who will lose farmland to the pipeline. Andrew Bogrand/Oxfam. 3 CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5 1 INTRODUCTION 11 2 HUMAN RIGHTS FRAMEWORK 22 3 LAND AND PROPERTY 31 4 PARTICIPATION AND ACCESS TO INFORMATION 51 5 MONEY AND LIVELIHOODS 58 6 ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH 70 7 SHARED RESPONSIBILITIES AND RECOMMENDATIONS 80 8 CONCLUSION 91 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY BACKGROUND When commercial deposits of oil were discovered under Uganda’s Lake Albert in 2006, the region was quickly transformed into one of the world’s top exploration hotspots. More than a decade later, however, oil production has yet to commence. A significant barrier to the commercialization of these deposits is their remote, inland location and the need for an export pipeline to transport the crude oil to the coast and onward to international markets. After years of negotiating, the governments of Uganda and Tanzania finalized an agreement in 2017 to build the East African Crude Oil pipeline (EACOP), with French energy company Total1 as the lead developer of the project. The final investment decision should be made in 2020, with pipeline construction starting in March 2021. At a distance of 1,440 kilometers (900 miles) and at an estimated cost of $3.5 billion, the EACOP would be one of the largest infrastructure projects in East Africa and the longest heated oil pipeline in the world. The pipeline would transport oil from a pumping station near Hoima, Uganda, to a storage terminal near the city of Tanga, on the northeastern coast of Tanzania. The route would run beside Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake, and pass through diverse ecosystems and human settlements. Empty Promises Down the Line? highlights the risks of the EACOP for ‘When this pipeline communities located along the proposed pipeline corridor in Uganda and project came, they Tanzania. Researched and produced by Global Rights Alert (GRA), the promised us too many Civic Response on Environment and Development (CRED), the Northern things. Up to now they have done nothing. This Coalition for Extractives and Environment (NCEE), and Oxfam, the report is why we have come to seeks to identify and document the actual and potential human rights fight for ourselves… to implications of this major infrastructure project from a community help our friends in other perspective. The report also provides recommendations to the communities. Do not get governments and companies involved about how to mitigate the adverse this problem of being impacts, defend human rights, and promote inclusiveness, transparency, promised the empty and accountability. promises.’ – Mary, a farmer in Rakai, Uganda, near the METHODOLOGY border with Tanzania. Research for this report was conducted between 2018 and 2020 and involved focus groups, interviews, and long-term engagement with a sample of communities along the pipeline route in Uganda and Tanzania. In Tanzania, the assessment team engaged with 520 community members (279 women and 241 men) from 15 villages. In Uganda, the assessment team engaged with 691 community members (375 women, 316 men, 11 children) from 21 villages from five districts. 5 This is a relatively small sample when compared to the total number of villages the EACOP will traverse: 231 villages in Tanzania and 178 in Uganda. Accordingly, this human rights impact assessment (HRIA) does not completely represent all of the risks faced by each interviewed community. Rather, it aims to present recurring issues experienced by many communities. In both countries, validation meetings were held separately with communities, companies, and government. To complete the process, the team sent the report to the oil companies and governments to give them an opportunity to comment on the findings. FINDINGS Like all large-scale infrastructure projects, the construction and operation of the EACOP is likely to affect human rights of the communities where the project is situated. Even before construction begins, the assessment and approval of projects like this create significant new risk and uncertainty for those people who currently depend on the land for farming, grazing, forestry, or fishing.2 As specified in its Human Rights Guide and Code of Conduct, Total commits to respect internationally recognized human rights standards. In developing EACOP, it has publicly committed to applying the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards. These standards represent an important set of project safeguards; however, communities worry what these commitments mean in practice – will they remain empty promises, leaving them with little to show for their land and crops, and nothing to support their future? Land and property A significant amount of land is needed to make way for the pipeline and its related infrastructure. Around 14,000 households will lose land.3 Roughly 200 households will need to be resettled in Uganda4 and approximately 330 households in Tanzania.5 Respondents describe how the land acquisition process has been ‘I am one of the people marked by confusion, shortcomings in assessment and valuation affected by the pipeline processes, delayed compensation and lack of transparency – project but what makes notwithstanding efforts by the oil companies. In both countries, me worried is that they took my land but I have respondents reported having insufficient information about timelines and not yet been valuation rates used. Men and women describe being left in a state of compensated.’ – speculation as farming cut-off dates have been issued but no Mary, a farmer in Rakai, compensation has been paid to date. Women face increased vulnerability Uganda, near the in land acquisition processes, since land is mainly owned by men. The border with Tanzania research also emphasizes the risks for Indigenous and vulnerable ethnic communities that could be affected by the pipeline. 6 Participation and access to information

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