Overall Goal: To ensure that the rights of communities affected by water, dams, environment and mines are safeguarded through fair and adequate compensation and participation for sustainable development.

Programme Overview

Compensation and rights of people affected by the LHWP still remain the nerve-centre of the programme. However, the program has expanded to include other areas such as the environment, water and mines. Issues of justice and respect for the rights of people affected by this major development projects continue to be a major preoccupation of the program. As economic opportunities continue to decline for majority of rural populations in Lesotho, the development of natural resources have held much hope for the people living adjacent to them. These resources include water, diamond mining and sandstone.

Programme Purpose

• The Primary purpose of the programme is to advocate for justice on water and environmental issues that affect communities in Lesotho.

Program Functions

A. Facilitation of effective people’s participation in water and environment issues: The programme targeted the consolidation of an ongoing program of raising awareness of people in their rights so that they remain the front-runners in the defence of their own rights. The program also set to facilitate the inclusive approach in making major decisions that affected them such as policy formulation.

B. Livelihoods Interventions for communities affected by large developments projects: Livelihoods provision is an exception intervention of the programmed. However it has been observed that there are those dire situations for resettled communities in particular. The target for 2009 was to assist those communities with those services such as water and tanks.

C. Advocacy for adequate and fair compensation affected by major development projects:

This function has preoccupied this programme since inception. But that notwithstanding communities are still not yet compensated in time, inadequately compensated or not compensated at all. The program set to empower the communities and liaise with LHWP on advocacy for fair and adequate compensation for affected communities.

D. Environmental Justice: The program is set to make sure that construction of major development project complies with environmental standards set by law. The program set to evaluate and review EIAs and compliance with other environmental standards.

E. Community Engagement

The programme engages intensively in relation to the mining rights of the communities which are affected by the construction of mines in their location. This has resulted in the relocation on graves, houses and gardens for the communities to other identified areas. The exhumation of the graves is an emotional event resembling the relocation of that was done when the big dams were constructed.

F. Resettlement and Compensation

The programme also carries out greater advocacy and closer engagement with project authorities which has resulted in reduced delays in the payment of compensation, increased the direct involvement of the communities in decision-making on compensation, and widened the range of compensation approach to include open and transparent management by project authorities. These strides have come after increased consensus and trust building among the community as well as leadership gained from sustained public engagement through pitsos, workshops and direct interactions. Pitsos, village committee meetings and workshops are held at the main Mohale project site, resettlement and relocation sites.

G. LHWP Downstream Expansion

In order to predispose the downstream communities on the rapidly expanding LHWP along the Orange River and its tributaries, public engagements are held on awareness-raising on the likely project impacts. The annual Water Day Water celebrations is held at identified areas to take stock of challenges that confront people in their communities and to served as a learning curve for other communities that are yet to be resettled as a result of a new dam project. Celebration of the day allows communities to raise the importance of impact mitigation as well as refining response approaches. Relevant stakeholders received direct inputs from the communities as opposed to the usual sporadic and often disjointed mechanisms. Water-related issues are not only placed firmly in the national conversation but remained high on the agenda of policy-making on the natural resources.

H. Networking

The programme engages in a wide array of activities to establish networks with like-minded organisations and with mission to attract funding. Activities that are undertaken to establish networks include sharing of Lesotho’s experiences in water advocacy and campaigning. Other networks are geared towards getting a big voice to make impact on advocacy such as the entrenchment of water and sanitation as a right in the constitutions of countries. The project has been driving this campaign and has made some gains. This cannot be done in isolation but needs a combined effort of all civil society and other organisations that share a similar vision with TRC.

I. The Lesotho Dams and Environmental Justice Project (LDEJP)

The LDEJP was set up in February 2009 as a partnership between TRC and the London-based Protimos Foundation, environmental justice advocacy organisation. The main purpose of the partnership is to assert and protect the legal rights of the people/communities affected or yet to be affected by the LHWP. The programme is hosted at TRC and employs two lawyers with expert assistance from senior counsel in Lesotho and South Africa. The project lawyer studies existing documentation relating to the management of grievances by the affected communities. This includes among others, the Ombudsman Report, the LHWP Treaty, other legislation, selected correspondence, books and other relevant reports.