EACOP Appeal, Public Interest, and Filing Deadlines

The EACJ did not decide whether EACOP breached environmental or human-rights obligations. Its appellate ruling instead explains why a public-interest case can end at the Treaty’s two-month jurisdictional threshold.

Contents

The issue behind the environmental headline

What the organisations challenged

The route through the EACJ

The legal questions on appeal

What the Appellate Division held

The rule of law that survives the case

What counsel did and what the record teaches

How the case fits earlier EACJ decisions

Why environmental litigants should still read it

The practical lesson

The issue behind the environmental headline

The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) dispute presents a striking contrast between the public importance of a claim and the narrow ground on which the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) resolved it. Four civil-society organisations argued that arrangements for the pipeline from Uganda to Tanzania breached the EAC Treaty and regional environmental obligations. Their claims raised questions about environmental review, participation, food security, protected ecosystems and the responsibilities of Partner States. Yet the Appellate Division did not decide whether those claims were true. It upheld the preliminary ruling that the Reference was out of time under Article 30(2) of the Treaty.

That distinction matters. The case is sometimes described as a binding environmental precedent. It is binding appellate authority on the procedural issues it decided, especially the use of a preliminary objection and the Treaty’s strict filing period. It is not a merits judgment establishing that EACOP complied with or violated environmental law. A reader seeking a rule on environmental approval, public participation or energy infrastructure must not attribute such a holding to this appeal.

The correct citation is Centre for Food and Adequate Living Rights (CEFROHT), Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), Natural Justice Kenya and Centre for Strategic Litigation Limited v Attorney General of the Republic of Uganda, Attorney General of the United Republic of Tanzania and Secretary General of the East African Community, Appeal No. 4 of 2023, [2025] EACJ 19 (26 November 2025) (Appellate Division). The EACJ delivered judgment on 26 November 2025. The court sat as a five-judge panel: President Nestor Kayobera, Vice-President Anita Mugeni, and Justices Kathurima M’Inoti, Cheborion Barishaki and Omar Othman Makungu. The published judgment records the Court’s decision as that of the Court and contains no separately identified dissenting opinion.

What the organisations challenged

CEFROHT, AFIEGO, Natural Justice Kenya and the Centre for Strategic Litigation brought a regional Reference concerning the intergovernmental arrangements for the pipeline that would carry crude oil from Hoima in Uganda to Tanga in Tanzania. They alleged that the project and the governments’ conduct in implementing it breached the EAC Treaty and the Protocol for Sustainable Development of the Lake Victoria Basin. Among other things, they contended that project work proceeded without the required environmental approvals and that environmental, human-rights and food-security impacts were not adequately addressed.

Uganda and Tanzania disputed the allegations and raised preliminary objections. The First Instance Division dismissed the Reference as time-barred, finding that Article 30(2) prevented it from considering the substance. The organisations appealed. Their grounds challenged the use of the preliminary objection, the conclusion that the Reference had been lodged outside the Treaty period, the resulting finding of lack of temporal jurisdiction and the award of costs. They also challenged the treatment of the pleadings and evidence relevant to determining the filing date.

The parties’ positions matter because the appeal was not a new trial of the environmental allegations. The appellants’ lawyers had to show that the first-instance court made a reviewable legal error in treating the time-bar as a proper preliminary issue or in identifying when the Treaty clock began. The respondents’ position was that the relevant dates appeared from the pleadings and project materials, so the court could determine the question of time without receiving evidence on contested facts.

The route through the EACJ

The legal framework begins with the EAC Treaty. Article 23 gives the EACJ the role of ensuring adherence to law in interpretation and application of the Treaty. Article 27 defines its jurisdiction, while Article 30(2) requires a person bringing a Reference to do so within two months of the relevant act, decision, regulation, directive or failure to act, or of when it came to the person’s knowledge. The period is unusually short for a complex infrastructure dispute, where public information, technical records and effects may emerge over time. But it is a Treaty period, not an ordinary procedural deadline that the Court may freely enlarge.

The EACJ Rules of Procedure, 2019 also matter. Rule 39 concerns preliminary objections. Rule 46 addresses verification of pleadings. A preliminary objection can be a useful way to resolve a case before a full hearing, but only where the point is one of law and the facts needed to decide it are not disputed. The familiar test comes from Mukisa Biscuits Manufacturing Co Ltd v West End Distributors Ltd [1969] EA 696: a preliminary objection must be a pure point of law, argued on the assumption that the other side’s pleaded facts are true, and it may dispose of a case. It is not a shortcut for deciding disputed evidence.

At the First Instance Division, the respondents argued that the Reference was filed outside the two-month period. The applicants argued, in part, that the limitation question could not be disposed of through a preliminary objection because relevant matters required factual assessment. They also contested how Article 30(2) applied to the actions and information identified in the case. The First Instance Division accepted the preliminary objection and found it lacked temporal jurisdiction. The appeal asked whether that legal approach could stand.

The legal questions on appeal

The Appellate Division identified three central questions: whether the First Instance Division erred in accepting a proper preliminary objection; whether it erred in finding that the Reference was filed outside the period in Article 30(2); and whether the pleadings were properly verified under Rule 46. The appeal also challenged the costs order. These questions were procedural, but they controlled whether any substantive environmental question could be heard at all.

On the first question, the Court considered whether limitation could be decided as a pure point of law. On the second, it examined how the two-month Treaty period applied to the dates and materials disclosed in the record. On the third, it considered the formal status of the pleadings and supporting material. The practical task for counsel was therefore precise: identify a legally material mistake in the first-instance court’s treatment of the record, rather than repeat the importance of the project or the gravity of the asserted harms.

The Court’s treatment also illustrates a general feature of appellate litigation. An appeal from a preliminary ruling does not necessarily reopen every factual assertion in the underlying claim. The appellate court reviews the legal basis of the ruling against the record and the relevant grounds of appeal. A strong appellate submission must connect each proposed error to the order under challenge and explain how correcting it would change the result.

What the Appellate Division held

The Appellate Division dismissed the appeal. It accepted that the time question could be decided as a preliminary point of law on the material before the First Instance Division. It upheld the conclusion that the Reference was outside the Article 30(2) period and that the EACJ therefore lacked jurisdiction ratione temporis, meaning jurisdiction over the matter by reason of time. Without that jurisdiction, the Court could not move on to decide the environmental and human-rights allegations.

The Court applied the Mukisa Biscuits approach to the preliminary objection. The fact that a question relates to a major project does not itself make limitation unsuitable for preliminary determination. If the dates and documents relevant to the statutory period are established from the pleadings or record, a pure question of Treaty interpretation may be decided without a full trial. Conversely, where the start date depends on genuinely disputed facts that must be tested, the objection cannot properly be treated as a pure point of law. The appeal did not persuade the Court that the necessary factual dispute prevented the issue from being decided at that stage.

The result was not a substantive endorsement of the pipeline. The Court did not determine whether environmental approvals were missing, whether the relevant protocols were breached, or whether affected communities were adequately consulted. The appropriate legal statement is narrower: the appellants’ Treaty Reference could not proceed because the Court considered it filed too late under Article 30(2). The judgment record also notes that the proper first-instance disposition should have been to strike out the Reference rather than dismiss it, but that correction did not change the outcome of the appeal.

On costs, the First Instance Division had ordered the appellants to pay costs jointly and severally. The appeal included a challenge to that order. The Appellate Division dismissed the appeal and ordered each party to bear its own costs. The First Instance Division had relied on Rule 127(1), under which costs ordinarily follow the event unless the Court has good reason to order otherwise. The appellate order on costs was therefore distinct from the first-instance award against the organisations. Public-interest status did not automatically determine the costs question; the Appellate Division made a separate order for the appeal.

The rule of law that survives the case

The rule is that a Reference invoking the EACJ’s Treaty jurisdiction must be filed within Article 30(2)’s two-month period, calculated from the relevant act, decision, regulation, directive or failure to act, or from the date on which it came to the applicant’s knowledge. Where the dates and facts necessary to apply that period are established and not genuinely disputed, the issue may be raised and decided by preliminary objection. If the Court concludes that the period has expired, it lacks temporal jurisdiction and cannot decide the merits of the alleged Treaty breach.

The rule is not that environmental claims are weak, that regional public-interest litigation cannot succeed, or that infrastructure projects are beyond judicial review. It is also not that every ongoing project creates a fresh filing period each day. Whether later conduct is a new act, a continuing breach or a consequence of an earlier decision depends on the pleaded legal wrong and the evidence. A litigant should not assume that describing an effect as “continuing” automatically restarts time.

The distinction between a recurring act and the continuing effects of an earlier act is particularly important. If the challenged conduct is a discrete decision or agreement, the limitation period may run from that decision or from when the applicant knew of it. If the claim concerns a separate later omission or decision, that later act may have its own time analysis. But a claimant must identify and plead the later conduct with precision. General references to ongoing construction or continuing harm may not be enough to revive a stale challenge to an earlier agreement.

What counsel did and what the record teaches

The organisations were represented by multiple counsel. The judgment records that Justin Semuyaba and David Kabanda appeared for CEFROHT and AFIEGO; Onyango Odel and Mark Odagga represented Natural Justice Kenya; and Jeremiah Mutobesya and Anthony Oduol represented the Centre for Strategic Litigation. Uganda was represented by a team from the Attorney General’s civil-litigation office. Tanzania and the EAC Secretary General also appeared through counsel. The judgment discusses the appellants’ grounds and the respondents’ answers; it does not offer a reliable basis for assigning the result to one lawyer’s personal performance.

The record shows that appellants directly contested the legal character of the preliminary objection and the application of Article 30(2), rather than leaving the time-bar unanswered. They also challenged the costs decision. These were relevant appellate issues. Their difficulty was that the Court was not persuaded that the time objection depended on facts requiring a full hearing or that the first-instance application of the Treaty period was legally wrong. The environmental significance of the case could not substitute for showing that error.

A practical lesson for counsel is to make the time analysis an early part of case preparation. Prepare a dated chronology of every challenged instrument, public announcement, approval, omission, and point at which each applicant learned of it. Separate a challenge to an original agreement from a challenge to a later decision or continuing statutory duty. Identify which applicant knew what and when; a group of organisations may not share identical knowledge or legal interests. Attach the documents that prove the dates and explain why the pleaded claim is within time.

Counsel should then test whether the dispute over the start date is a genuine factual dispute or only a disagreement about the legal effect of agreed facts. Where material dates are contested, explain what evidence would resolve them and why the point should not be decided preliminarily. Where they are not contested, focus on the correct statutory trigger and the way Article 30(2) should be interpreted. A broad appeal brief repeating the substantive environmental case may be less effective than a short, record-based explanation of the limitation error.

The case also teaches lawyers to distinguish the remedy requested from the jurisdictional gateway. An injunction to stop a project, a declaration that the Treaty was breached and an order requiring regional consultation all depend on the Court having jurisdiction over the Reference. The applicant should identify the legal basis for each remedy and plead each alleged breach with dates and sources. If the main environmental questions cannot be reached because of a jurisdictional bar, an otherwise compelling merits case will not cure it.

How the case fits earlier EACJ decisions

The appeal follows the earlier First Instance Division decision in Centre for Food and Adequate Living Rights (CEFROHT) and Others v Attorney General of the Republic of Uganda and Others, Reference No. 39 of 2020, [2023] EACJ 15 (29 November 2023), which dismissed the original Reference as time-barred. The appellate case was the attempt to overturn that procedural result. It did not displace the settled importance of Article 30(2); it reinforced the need to treat the Treaty’s filing period as a jurisdictional condition.

The judgment also draws on the established preliminary-objection principle in Mukisa Biscuits Manufacturing Co Ltd v West End Distributors Ltd [1969] EA 696 and EACJ decisions on limitation, including Secretary General of the EAC v Rt Hon Margaret Zziwa, Appeal No. 7 of 2015, and Attorney General of the Republic of Kenya v Independent Medical Legal Unit, Appeal No. 1 of 2011. Those authorities explain why limitation and jurisdiction can be pure legal questions when their application turns on pleaded and established facts. Later EACJ cases have continued to treat Article 30(2) as a strict threshold, including Kiwanuka v Attorney General of the Republic of Uganda (Appeal No. 7 of 2020) [2025] EACJ 18 and Xavier v Attorney General of the Republic of Rwanda (Appeal No. 8 of 2022) [2025] EACJ 7.

This line of authority makes the case useful in any regional claim involving public law or environmental governance, but its usefulness is procedural. Before filing, a claimant should ask whether the challenged measure occurred within the Treaty period, whether it was publicly available, and whether later events are legally distinct. The judgment is also a reminder that the EACJ is not a general environmental court with open-ended jurisdiction: it adjudicates matters through the Treaty mandate and its procedural rules.

Why environmental litigants should still read it

A dismissal on limitation grounds can leave serious substantive claims unanswered. That result may disappoint communities and organisations seeking a merits hearing, but it does not establish that the underlying concerns lacked merit. It means the court did not resolve them. Public communication should preserve that distinction, because describing a procedural dismissal as a victory for a project’s compliance can be as misleading as describing it as a ruling that the project breached the law.

For advocates and communities, the first lesson is to act quickly when a regional legal instrument, government decision or cross-border agreement becomes known. The second is to preserve evidence of when and how knowledge arose. The third is to identify the continuing legal duty with care. Environmental harm may unfold over years, while the legal act challenged may be a single approval years earlier. The evidential and legal timeline must bridge that difference.

The case also leaves room for distinct domestic claims. A ruling that an EACJ Reference is time-barred does not automatically decide whether a domestic court has jurisdiction over a claim under Ugandan, Tanzanian or Kenyan law, nor whether a later administrative act may be challenged under national legislation. Any such claim must stand on its own legal basis, national standing rules and national limitation periods. One should not assume that a failed regional case automatically ends every possible local remedy, or that it preserves one.

The practical lesson

The CEFROHT appeal is a public-interest case about a major energy project, but its binding lesson is about time, jurisdiction and disciplined pleading. The Court did not decide whether EACOP breached environmental obligations. It decided that Article 30(2) barred the Reference and that the preliminary objection could determine the issue on the record. For future litigants, the strongest protection for a substantive claim may begin with a precise chronology and a carefully framed jurisdictional basis.

Sources Mentioned in This Case Analysis

The authorities discussed are the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community, particularly Articles 23, 27 and 30(2); the EACJ Rules of Procedure, 2019, Rules 39, 46 and 127; the Protocol for Sustainable Development of the Lake Victoria Basin; Mukisa Biscuits Manufacturing Co Ltd v West End Distributors Ltd [1969] EA 696; Secretary General of the EAC v Rt Hon Margaret Zziwa, Appeal No. 7 of 2015; Attorney General of the Republic of Kenya v Independent Medical Legal Unit, Appeal No. 1 of 2011; Centre for Food and Adequate Living Rights (CEFROHT) and Others v Attorney General of the Republic of Uganda and Others, Reference No. 39 of 2020, [2023] EACJ 15; Kiwanuka v Attorney General of the Republic of Uganda (Appeal No. 7 of 2020) [2025] EACJ 18; and Xavier v Attorney General of the Republic of Rwanda (Appeal No. 8 of 2022) [2025] EACJ 7.

Suggested Citation

Ronald Serwanga, “EACOP Appeal, Public Interest and Filing Deadlines” East Africa Legal Insight (9 October 2026).