Displaced by oil exploration: examining violations of social economic rights of the IDPS in Hoima District, Uganda

Development projects are conventionally linked with the protracted internal displacement and involuntary resettlement of hundreds of millions of people in the world. Uganda is not an exception, the demand for land for oil exploration projects displaced a large number of people and continue to displace people in Albertine Graben oil region which in turn make them become IDPs in their own country in the name of development. Unfortunately, the Uganda government IDP policy did not account for development-induced IDPs, as a result making thousands of people displaced to suffer from food insecurity, homelessness, jobless-ness among others. During the reallocation exercise rights of the indigenous people were violated among them are the social economic rights which this paper puts a depth analysis on through making use of both available documents and carrying out selected interviews with concerned stake-holders. Examining the processes through which the inhabitants of Hoima district who lived in the area where oil was discovered were displaced to camps of Kabale and Buseruka reset-tlement villages, deeper analysis of how the government and the oil companies acquired the land from the inhabitants while focusing on social economic rights violations in reference to various court cases that have so far taken place both on local and international scene. Re-gardless of the violation of their rights, the study was able to show how the IDPs through the concepts of legal mobilization and empowerment mobilized the law to challenge the injustice meted on the by the government.