Four NGOs recently appealed to the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) to have their concerns about a contentious oil pipeline heard on merit. The landmark case, filed four years ago, had previously been dismissed on technical grounds.
The four East African NGOs — the Center for Food and Adequate Living Rights (CEFROHT) and the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), both from Uganda, Natural Justice (Kenya), and the Centre for Strategic Litigation (Tanzania) — first filed their case with the EACJ in November 2020. They urged the court to halt the construction of the 1,443-kilometer (897-mile) East African crude oil pipeline (EACOP) that’s designed to transport oil from Uganda to Tanzania.
The NGOs argue that EACOP violates human rights and environmental laws of both countries and was moving forward without adequate compensation and public participation, while displacing local communities and harming the ecosystems they depend on.
EACOP is led by French oil giant TotalEnergies and involves state-owned companies from China, Uganda and Tanzania.
At the first hearing in November 2023, the court dismissed the EACOP case, agreeing with the governments of Tanzania and Uganda that the NGOs had exceeded the objection period by not filing their complaint within 60 days of the 2017 agreements. However, David Kabanda, a human rights lawyer from CEFROHT representing the NGOs, previously told Mongabay they learned the details about the project only after a 2020 media briefing by the Ugandan government.
The NGOs filed an appeal against the dismissal, arguing for the case to be heard on its merit. But the appeal’s first hearing in November 2024 was postponed on technical grounds.
With the appeal submissions now complete, if the judgment favors the NGOs, the case will go back to the lower EACJ court to be heard on merit, Kabanda said at a press conference after the hearing.
“The [appellate] court has told us that they would be summoning us for the judgment, which we anticipate seeing in about two months,” he added.
The lower court, while dismissing the case during the first hearing, had also imposed costs on the NGOs to be awarded to the respondents, including the governments of Uganda and Tanzania. Kabanda said they’ve also appealed for those costs to be set aside.
Dickens Kamugisha, CEO of AFIEGO, said at the press conference that neither the EACJ nor the national courts of Tanzania and Uganda have previously imposed costs on appellants in public interest cases. If the court still wants the appellants to bear the cost, Kamugisha said they’re “very confident” the communities “will organize and pay,” and that costs shouldn’t stop others from fighting injustice in the future.
“We believe that what matters the most is that this project is not complying with the laws of the region,” Kamugisha said. “If we can successfully show that there’s no compliance, we are 100% sure the project can be stopped anytime.”
Banner image: Lions are found along EACOP route. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
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