Just six years ago in Bududa, an entire village disappeared beneath landslides. Families were buried alive. Children left school for home and never returned, the broken fields and among others. Uganda mourned. We wept and we demanded answers. The victims through their lawyers stood in Court and forced the country to confront a painful truth: the deaths were not “acts of God.” They were acts of negligence. The risks were known, yet the people were left with no safe alternatives and no meaningful protection.
Today, we find ourselves in Kween, facing the same devastation. We are digging through the same mud, for the same reasons, with the same grief in our hands. The same mountain slopes. The same patterns of settlement in high-risk zones. The same decades of scientific research warning of danger and once again, the same preventable graves. This is not coincidence. It is a pattern that exposes a profound failure of responsibility.
The persistent landslides in Kween, Bududa and the wider Mount Elgon region highlight a deeper crisis beyond climate change. They reveal systemic issues that have gone unaddressed for far too long: the absence of sustainable resettlement options for vulnerable communities, weak enforcement of land-use regulations, degraded ecosystems left unrecovered and weak disaster response system.
The Constitution of Uganda under Article 39 guarantees every citizen the right to a clean and healthy environment. This right is not a hopeful ideal. It is a binding obligation. It requires the State to act proactively to prevent environmental harm, not merely respond once lives have already been lost.
The tragedy in Kween reminds us that environmental degradation and governance failures are inseparable. When the land collapses, it collapses on those who were already marginalized. When protection fails, it fails the poorest first. And when leadership delays, the cost is counted in lives. If prevention does not replace reaction, the soil of Mount Elgon will continue to bury the people who have trusted the State to protect them.
Greenwatch remains committed: to advocate for stronger environmental protection and climate resilience policies, to pursue legal action to ensure that the right to a clean and healthy environment is not only recognized but also enforced and to collaborate with the different stakeholders to demand accountability and meaningful reforms.
Let the tragedy in Kween be the moment we insist that safety and dignity are not privileges but rights.
Greenwatch
We believe that environmental rights can be better exercised when people have access to information, can participate in decisions that affect their surroundings and have access to justice incase their rights are violated. Greenwatch exists to ensure that every individual in Uganda knows that they have environmental rights and these rights can be fully exercised through access to information, justice and public participation.
