Uganda: 20,000 people expelled from their land for carbon trading scheme
| Publisher | Norwegian Refugee Council/Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (NRC/IDMC) |
| Publication Date | 23 September 2011 |
| Cite as | Norwegian Refugee Council/Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (NRC/IDMC), Uganda: 20,000 people expelled from their land for carbon trading scheme, 23 September 2011, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/4e8050662.html [accessed 1 June 2023] |
| Disclaimer | This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. |
According to a report released by Oxfam, the Ugandan government and a British forestry company have forcibly expelled more than 20,000 people from their homes in Uganda in recent years. Some of the evicted people said that their families had been living there for 40 to 60 years. New Forests Company (NFC) was granted a 50-year government licence in 2005 to grow trees in three districts of Uganda, reportedly to sell credits from the carbon dioxide the trees absorb to polluters in wealthier nations, under the carbon trading mechanism foreseen in the Kyoto Protocol.
In a New York Times article, NFC promised to conduct "an immediate and thorough" investigation. In the article, a Ugandan government spokesman said that the residents who had been expelled were on the land illegally, but blamed the use of violence to remove them on corrupt politicians and police officers operating outside the law.
Oxfam's report also documents the devastating effect of land grabs in other countries already affected by internal displacement, including South Sudan, Indonesia and Guatemala.
