Communities in Uganda suffered violence and damage to property during evictions after UK-based forestry company bought local land, Oxfam says
KAMPALA (AlertNet) - Communities in Uganda say they suffered violence and damage to their property during the eviction of more than 20,000 people from their homes after a UK-based forestry company bought local land, according to a report by British aid agency Oxfam on Thursday.
The removal of people from Uganda’s central Kiboga and Mubende districts between 2006 and 2010 is just one example of evictions the international aid agency cites in its report "Land and Power", condemning a growing global trend of “land grabs.”
Uganda has large chunks of uncultivated, arable land and the government has in recent years signaled it was willing to hand out some of it to local and international investors to increase the country’s food and cash crop production.
“The Uganda case clearly shows how land grabs are slipping through the net of existing safeguards…thousands of people are suffering because they have been evicted,” said Oxfam International’s executive director, Jeremy Hobbs.
New Forests Company (NFC) was accused by locals of participating in their eviction after it was granted a license to establish three timber plantations on 20,000 hectares of land in 2004, the report said.
“It is alleged in the legal claims lodged by a large number of local villagers against NFC that individuals whom they believe to be NFC employees took part in evictions,” the report said. “Today, the people evicted from the land are desperate, having been driven into poverty and landlessness.”
NFC denied the allegations and said the report was based on anecdotal evidence.
“Our understanding of these resettlements is that they were legal, voluntary and peaceful and our first hand observations of them confirmed this,” NFC said in a statement. The company added it had an “impeccable track record” in community investment and development, having created more than 2,000 jobs in remote Ugandan communities.
DAILY STRUGGLE
The report cites the case of Christine*, one of the people who say they have been evicted to make way for NFC plantations. She and her husband used to grow enough food to feed their eight children using six hectares of land that they had farmed for over 20 years, the report said.
But they now struggle to pay rent for a cramped two-room house, where there is not enough land to farm and grow food, the report said, adding that Christine’s children often eat only once a day.
The Ugandan National Forestry Authority (NFA) granted licences over the plantation areas to NFC and authorised the removal of the former residents, which took place by February 2010 in Mubende and between 2006 and July 2010 in Kiboga, the report said. The NFA said that the people living there were illegal encroachers on forest land and that their evictions were justified, it added.
More than 20,000 local villagers believe they have clear legal rights to the land they occupied, and both communities have brought a case before the Ugandan High Court, the report said, adding that the claims are being resisted by NFC and neither case has been finally decided.
NFC started planting in 2005 and planned to invest over $47 million in ten years and has so far planted about 12 million trees, according to the report.
NFC said it took the allegations in the report extremely seriously and would conduct an immediate and thorough investigation of them.
Agricultural investors, the report said, must respect all existing land use rights and adhere to the principle of free, prior, and informed consent in agreements they enter into with host governments.
*Christine’s name has been changed
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