The EACOP case is closed, but the accountability is not.

For the communities living along the proposed EACOP route, a recent ruling from the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) felt deeply familiar—another door swung shut on procedural grounds. Yet this time, that door didn’t quite close completely. The Appellate Division confirmed what has always been true: this case is a matter of genuine public interest, and CEFROHT and its partners aren’t going anywhere.

The appeal was an ambitious one. Filed alongside three other East African civil society organisations, CEFROHT had asked the Appellate Division to set aside a 2023 decision by the court’s First Instance Division that tossed out the original petition because it was filed outside the 60‑day time limit set by the EAC Treaty. The groups’ argument was simple: the Inter‑Governmental Agreement and Host Government Agreements that form the legal backbone of the pipeline project were signed in secrecy and only made public years later. How, they asked, can a community be expected to challenge an agreement it didn’t know existed?

The five‑judge Appellate bench, however, wasn’t persuaded on that point. In a ruling delivered on November 26, 2025, in Arusha, Tanzania, the court upheld the First Instance Division’s finding that it lacked jurisdiction because of the time‑bar issue. It declined to order a retrial, noting that the case was tied to the specific date the Inter‑Governmental Agreement was signed.

But here’s where the narrative shifts from defeat to something more nuanced. The very same court turned around and delivered a quiet victory for accountability: it overturned the trial court’s order on costs. Instead of punishing the civil society groups with the governments’ legal fees, the judges ruled that each party must bear its own costs, explicitly recognizing the “public interest involved in the appeal”. In effect, the court told Uganda, Tanzania, and the EAC Secretary General that citizens who come to court trying to enforce the region’s own treaty obligations should not be slapped with a bill for doing so.

For the families who have lost ancestral land, the farmers whose crops now grow in the shadow of a 1,443‑kilometre heated pipeline, and the ecosystems—forests, wetlands, Lake Victoria’s basin—that scientists warn are under threat, the ruling is understandably painful. They wanted their day in court, and they didn’t get it. But for CEFROHT’s legal team, led by advocates like Joan Kembabazi, the judgment is far from the final word. Environmental compliance, after all, is not a one‑time checkbox; it is a continuing obligation that governments and developers carry every single day the pipeline operates.

That is the foundation on which the next phase of work is being built. CEFROHT’s lawyers have already held strategic discussions to review the outcome and chart the path forward. The court’s decision on costs gives them something they didn’t have before—a clear judicial statement that this fight serves the public good—and they intend to use it. Multiple channels remain wide open: continued legal challenges, policy lobbying at national and regional levels, and sustained pressure on the governments of Uganda and Tanzania to live up to their own environmental and human‑rights commitments.

So, no, a retrial was not ordered. But the costs were lifted, the public interest was affirmed, and the people behind this case are still standing. For the communities along the pipeline, that matters. It means the story isn’t over—it’s just entering its next chapter. And CEFROHT will be there to write it.