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How land grabs are causing food insecurity: A case of a community land rights defender in Mubende district forced to buy food for a family of 13 people for the last five years.

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2 years ago

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Part of Mr. Ssetimba’s garden that was sprayed by the land grabber’s workers.

By Witness Radio team.

As prices of food commodities continue to skyrocket, many families in Uganda are struggling to have a meal that can take them through the day. For John Settimba, a community land rights defender in the Mubende district, chances to pull this off for his family of 13 are limited.

Mubende district is 149.6 kilometers from the capital Kampala. The major economic activity in the district is agriculture with an emphasis on food crops like sweet potatoes, beans, cassava, maize, bananas, ground nuts, etc. Cash crops include coffee and tea.

The selfless defender who has been pushing back forced eviction being masterminded by one George Kaweesi since 2018 reports that his one-and-a-half acres of sweet potatoes and cassava garden have been sprayed with chemicals by laborers of the evictor.

Settimba a resident of Kawuula village, East Division in Mubende district says, all food crops have dried up in a day after being sprayed, leaving his family with no hope for food from his garden instead to buy food markets.

“I have been using Shs. 30,000, which is equivalent to (8.15 USD) to buy food every day for my family since 2018. Late last year, I decided to use my land to grow sweet potatoes and cassava. Unfortunately, they have been destroyed before harvest” Said Ssettimba.

On Friday 06th January 2023, one and a half acres of cassava and sweet potatoes were sprayed by casual laborers in the night hours.

According to the defender’s wife, on reaching their garden, she found the plantation had been sprayed and had started to dry up. She added that she reported the matter to the area police but the police declined to register the complaint because she failed to pay money.

According to Ssettimba’s wife, this is not the first time the Kaweesi’s laborers have sprayed his crops. In 2022, the defender’s banana plantation was caused to dry after spraying, explaining that these attacks are carried out at night.

“He always tells us he wants to use my land and that we should vacate. He has prohibited us from carrying out any activity on our land, causing my family members to starve. We had about 22 acres, but he has taken 11 acres. But also, we cannot use the remaining piece of land since he targets crops grown on it before harvest.” The defender explained.

Ssettimba further explains that Kaweesi’s acts of impunity have forced him to seek employment (to be hired as a laborer by other farmers) to support his family.

“This is embarrassing because the money I get is too little, and I cannot afford to buy enough food to feed my family, which would have been easier if I was using my land.” The defender added.

In 2018, one George Kaweesi, with help of Mubende district police and private security firms carried out a forced eviction of over 3500 villagers in Kambuye, Kikono, Kawula, Kyabaana, Kanseera, and Lwensanga. Nonetheless, Ssettimba’s family survived the storm. Ruins of the evictions have been outgrown by the wild, but his house which is saddled by Kaweesi’s land is a remnant of that violent eviction. He has refused to give up despite repeated harassment and threats.

According to Witness Radio’s data, Mubende district is one of the forced eviction hot spots in the country, witnessing high levels of violence and criminality related to evictions. For years, Witness Radio has reported millions of people being evicted from their land by wealth investors without prior consultation, compensation, or resettlement.

However, Mr. George Kaweesi denied the accusations of land grabbing and spraying the defender’s land.  He said, “I paid every squatter and they vacated, but Ssettimba refused. I have never grabbed his land and am not aware that my men sprayed his garden.”

 

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Mr. Mafumu Paul and his accomplices at police after their arrest.
Mr. Mafumu Paul and his accomplices at police after their arrest.
State House Anti-Corruption Unit nets a surveyor implicated in Mubende district land-grabs After 15 years of anguish, NFC evictees reunite to rent land to fight food insecurity Breaking: Court dismisses a criminal case against a community land rights defender for want of prosecution. Mubende district leaders want state attorney disqualified from a case against 28 land rights defenders. Breaking: Police raids a community land rights defender’s home, and arrests another community land rights defender.

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Appellate Division of the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) rejects the request to dismiss the EACOP appeal case.

Published

22 hours ago

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November 18, 2024

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By Witness Radio team.

The Appellate Division of the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) has rejected a request by the Tanzanian government to dismiss an appeal filed by four East African civil society organizations (CSOs) seeking compliance with the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) with regional and international human rights standards.

Tanzania’s Deputy Solicitor General, Mr. Mark Mulwambo, requested the judges dismiss the Appeal, arguing that the record of proceedings from the hearings held at the First Instance Division was missing. The record of proceedings includes the CSOs and respondents’ submissions. He added that, without it, the judges at the Appellate Division could not determine whether the First Instance Court erred in the ruling that they made.

However, the court could not grant his request. Instead, it ordered the four CSOs that filed the Appeal to file supplementary information so that the judges could hear the case.

The Appeal will be heard by a panel of judges from the Appellate Division of the EACJ, including Justice Nestor Kayobera, the division’s president; Justice Anita Mugeni, the Vice President; Justice Kathurima M’Inot; Justice Cheboriona Barishaki; and Justice Omar Othman Makungu. These judges, with their expertise in regional and international law, will review the Appeal and make a final decision.

The Appeal was filed by four CSOs, including the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) from Uganda, the Centre for Food and Adequate Living Rights (CEFROHT) from Uganda, the Natural Justice (NJ) from Kenya, and the Centre for Strategic Litigation (CSL) from Tanzania, in December 2023. This was in response to the dismissal of their case, which sought compliance with the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) with regional and international human rights standards, by judges at the First Instance Division of the EACJ in November 2023.

During the dismissal, the court ruled that the applicants filed the petition out of time, stating that the petitioners should have filed the petition as early as 2017 instead of 2020. The court also ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the case, meaning it did not have the legal authority to decide on this matter. These decisions were based on legal precedents and the specific circumstances of the case.

The CSOs were ordered to file the record of proceedings by Justice Nestor Kayobera by November 29, 2024.

The court session was attended by EACOP-affected communities from both Uganda and Tanzania. Among them was Mr. Gozanga Kyakulubya, an affected person from Kyotera District in Southern Uganda, who traveled to Arusha to participate in the hearing. His personal story underscores the profound impact of the EACOP on the lives of these communities.

He shared his grievance, stating, “I came to the court because I have a lot of pain. My land was taken for the EACOP, and before I was paid, it was fenced off. The government of Uganda also sued me because I rejected the low compensation offered by EACOP. We need at least one court to be fair to EACOP host communities, and we hope the East African Court of Justice will be that court.”

The EACOP has been designed, constructed, financed, and operated through a dedicated Pipeline Company with the same name. The shareholders in EACOP are affiliates of the three upstream joint venture partners: the Uganda National Oil Company (8%), TotalEnergies E&P Uganda (62%), and CNOOC Uganda Ltd (15%), together with the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (15%).

The 1,443km pipeline will eventually transport Uganda’s crude oil from Kabaale—Hoima to the Chongoleani peninsula near Tanga Port in Tanzania.

Climate activists and civil society organizations, however, continue to oppose the project, claiming that it will harm several fragile and protected habitats irreversibly and violate key agreements and treaties.

The potential environmental damage is a cause for concern among these groups.

Related posts:

Appellate Division of the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) to hear an Appeal filed by CSOs which seeks to reinstate a petition against the construction of the EACOP project tomorrow. EACJ’s Appellate Court will hear an appeal on the dismissed Case against EACOP development. The Appellate East African Court of Justice sets timelines for hearing an appeal against the construction of the EACOP. East African Court of Justice is to decide whether it has jurisdiction to try the EACOP case filed by Four East African NGOs today. The East Africa regional court dismisses a case challenging the construction of the EACOP project.
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Big oil firms knew of dire effects of fossil fuels as early as 1950s, memos show

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24 hours ago

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November 18, 2024

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Newly unearthed documents contain warning from head of Air Pollution Foundation, founded in 1953 by oil interests.

Major oil companies, including Shell and precursors to energy giants Chevron, ExxonMobil and BP, were alerted about the planet-warming effects of fossil fuels as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents show.

The warning, from the head of an industry-created group known as the Air Pollution Foundation, was revealed by Climate Investigations Center and published Tuesday by the climate website DeSmog. It represents what may be the earliest instance of big oil being informed of the potentially dire consequences of its products.

“Every time there’s a push for climate action, [we see] fossil fuel companies downplay and deny the harms of burning fossil fuels,” said Rebecca John, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center who uncovered the historic memos. “Now we have evidence they were doing this way back in the 50s during these really early attempts to crack down on sources of pollution.”

The Air Pollution Foundation was founded in 1953 by oil interests in response to public outcry over smog that was blanketing Los Angeles county.

Researchers had identified hydrocarbon pollution from fossil fuel sources such as cars and refineries as a primary culprit and Los Angeles officials had begun to proposal pollution controls.

The Air Pollution Foundation, which was primarily funded by the lobbying organization Western States Petroleum Association, publicly claimed to want to help solve the smog crisis, but was set up in large part to counter efforts at regulation, the new memos indicate.

It’s a commonly used tactic today, said Geoffrey Supran, an expert in climate disinformation at the University of Miami.

Fire emanating from a factory chimney
A gas flare from the Shell Chemical LP petroleum refinery burns against the sky in Louisiana. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

“The Air Pollution Foundation appears to be one of the earliest and most brazen efforts by the oil industry to prop up a … front group to exaggerate scientific uncertainty to defend business as usual,” Supran said. “It helped lay the strategic and organizational groundwork for big oil’s decades of climate denial and delay.”

Then called the Western Oil and Gas Association, the lobbying group provided $1.3m to the group in the 1950s – the equivalent of $14m today – to the Air Pollution Foundation. That funding came from member companies including Shell and firms later bought by or merged with ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Sunoco and ConocoPhillips, as well as southern California utility SoCalGas.

The Air Pollution Foundation recruited the respected chemical engineer Lauren B Hitchcock to serve as its president. And in 1954, the organization – which until then was arguing that households incinerating waste in backyards was to blame – asked Caltech to submit a proposal to determine the main source of smog.

In November 1954, Caltech submitted its proposal, which included crucial warnings about the coal, oil, and gas and said that “a changing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate” may “ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization”, a memo previously uncovered by John shows. The newly uncovered documents show the Air Pollution Foundation shared the warning with the Western Oil and Gas Association’s members in March 1955.

In the mid-1950s, climate researchers were beginning to understand the planet-heating impact of fossil fuels, and to discuss their emergent research in the media. But the newly uncovered Air Pollution Foundation memo represents the earliest known cautionary message to the oil industry about the greenhouse effect.

The Air Pollution Foundation’s board of trustees, including representatives from SoCalGas and Union Oil, which was later acquired by Chevron, approved funding for the Caltech project. In the following months, foundation president Hitchcock advocated for pollution controls on oil refineries and then testified in favor of state-funded pollution research in the California Senate.

Hitchcock was reprimanded by industry leaders for these efforts. In an April 1955 meeting, the Western Oil and Gas Association told him he was drawing too much “attention” to refinery pollution and conducting “too broad a program” of research. The Air Pollution Foundation was meant to be “protective” of the industry and should publish “findings which would be accepted as unbiased”, meeting minutes uncovered by John show.

After this meeting, the foundation made no further reference to the potential climate impact of fossil fuels, publications reviewed by DeSmog suggest.

“The fossil fuel industry is often seen as having followed in the footsteps of the tobacco industry’s playbook for denying science and blocking regulation,” said Supran. “But these documents suggest that big oil has been running public affairs campaigns to downplay the dangers of its products just as long as big tobacco, starting with air pollution in the early-to-mid-1950s.”

In the following months, many of the foundation’s research projects were scaled back or designed to be conducted in direct partnerships with lobbying groups. Hitchcock resigned as president in 1956.

Last year, the largest county in Oregon sued the Western States Petroleum Association for allegedly sowing doubt about the climate crisis despite longstanding knowledge of it.

DeSmog and the Climate Investigations Center previously found that the Air Pollution Foundation underwrote the earliest studies on CO2 conducted in 1955 and 1956 by renowned climate scientist Charles David Keeling, paving the way for his groundbreaking “Keeling Curve,” which charts how fossil fuels cause an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Other earlier investigations have found that major fossil companies spent decades conducting their own research into the consequences of burning coal, oil and gas. One 2023 study found that Exxon scientists made “breathtakingly” accurate predictions of global heating in the 1970s and 1980s, only to then spend decades sowing doubt about climate science.

The newly unearthed documents come from the Caltech archives, the US National Archives, the University of California at San Diego, the State University of New York Buffalo archives and Los Angeles newspapers from the 1950s.

The Western States Petroleum Association and the American Petroleum Institute, the top US fossil fuels lobby group, did not respond to requests for comment.

Origin Source: The Guardian

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EACJ’s Appellate Court will hear an appeal on the dismissed Case against EACOP development.

Published

4 days ago

on

November 15, 2024

By

By Witness Radio team.

The appeal against the dismissal of a lower court case, filed by four East African civil societies seeking compliance with the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) with regional and international human rights standards, is scheduled to be heard today, November 15, 2024, by the Appellate Court of the East Africa Court of Justice. The Appellate Court is the higher court that reviews decisions made by lower courts, and in this Case, it will review the decision of the EACJ’s First Instance Division that dismissed the Case.

The appeal case was filed against the Attorney Generals of Uganda and Tanzania and the East African Community Secretary General (EAC).

The appeal is based on case Reference No. 39 of 2020, which was filed in November 2020 by the Center for Food and Adequate Living Rights (CEFROHT), Natural Justice (NJ), Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), and Center for Strategic Litigation (CSL) from Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. The Case asked the EACJ lower court to issue temporary and permanent injunctions to halt the development of the EACOP.

The organizations claimed that the EACOP violates key East African and international treaties and laws, including the East African Community (EAC) Treaty, Protocol for Sustainable Development of the Lake Victoria basin, Convention on Biological Diversity, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Others include the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and the African Convention on Conservation of Natural Resources.

The EACOP has been designed, constructed, financed, and operated through a dedicated Pipeline Company with the same name. The shareholders in EACOP are affiliates of the three upstream joint venture partners: the Uganda National Oil Company (8%), TotalEnergies E&P Uganda (62%), and CNOOC Uganda Ltd (15%), together with the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (15%).

The 1,443km pipeline will eventually transport Uganda’s crude oil from Kabaale—Hoima to the Chongoleani peninsula near Tanga Port in Tanzania.

Climate activists and civil society organizations, however, have opposed the project, claiming that it will harm several fragile and protected habitats irreversibly and violate key agreements and treaties. Furthermore, the project has been linked to several human rights violations, such as land grabs and the imprisonment of project critics.

On November 29, 2023, the EACJ dismissed the Case. The court ruled that the applicants filed the petition out of time, stating that the petitioners should have filed the petition as early as 2017 instead of 2020. The court also ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the Case, meaning it did not have the legal authority to make a decision on this particular matter. These rulings were based on the court’s interpretation of the EAC Treaty and procedural law.

Undeterred by the dismissal of the Case, on December 13, 2023, the four CSOs demonstrated their unwavering commitment to justice by filing an appeal at the East African Court of Justice’s (EACJ) Appellate Division.

Their appeal is meticulously based on the grounds that the court case was timely, given that the applicants (CSOs) became aware of the signing of the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) on October 26, 2020, and filed the Case on November 6, 2020, just ten days after gaining knowledge of the IGA.

They argue that the First Instance Division erred in interpreting Article 30 of the EAC Treaty and misapplied procedural law. The CSOs, with their legal expertise, assert that article 30 of the EAC Treaty sets a two-month limitation period for filing cases at the EACJ, starting from the enactment, publication, directive, decision, or action being contested, or, in its absence, from the day it came to the knowledge of the complainant.

The appellants also contend that the court should have recognized that their statement of reference was based on 12 grounds, with only two being challenged by the respondents. They argue that the court should have preserved and heard the remaining ten grounds, even if the preliminary objections on the two were upheld. Furthermore, they assert that the court misinterpreted the evidence, as the affidavits relied upon in resolving the preliminary objections constituted valid evidence, which they argue is a violation of the law on preliminary objections, among other issues.”

In their appeal, which will be heard today, the CSOs ask the Appellate Court to overturn the First Instance Division’s decision to dismiss their EACOP case, return the Case to the First Instance Division for a merits hearing, and return the Case to the First Instance Division for a trial of the remaining aspects for which the governments of Tanzania and Uganda did not raise any preliminary objections.

They also want the First Instance Division’s decision to overturn the awarding of costs decision to the Tanzanian and Ugandan governments and the EAC Secretary General.

Related posts:

Appellate Division of the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) to hear an Appeal filed by CSOs which seeks to reinstate a petition against the construction of the EACOP project tomorrow. The Appellate East African Court of Justice sets timelines for hearing an appeal against the construction of the EACOP. The East Africa regional court dismisses a case challenging the construction of the EACOP project. EACJ TO GIVE A RULING ON THE PRELIMINARY OBJECTIONS RAISED IN THE EACOP CASE East African Court of Justice is to decide whether it has jurisdiction to try the EACOP case filed by Four East African NGOs today.
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