Uganda reports that some 250 of its citizens are trafficked abroad every year to destinations such as China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, South Africa, France, Canada and Iraq with numbers on the rise due to poverty and poor employment opportunities. Not all of these cases are abductions. Many respond to job opportunities such as domestic roles in the Middle East only to find, after arrival, that their passports are confiscated and they are treated as little more than slaves. Those who manage to get away find disinterest from Middle Eastern authorities with many ending up in camps for months whilst their situation is assessed.
One such technique, used in some of Kampala's shopping malls, is to display posters promising young women free fares to Malaysia where there were jobs waiting as nannys, maids or in bar work
On arrival they have their passports taken and are forced into prostitution rings with no means of escape and certainly no funds to return home.More insidiously children are trafficked with a typical report from the summer of 2013 recounting how twenty children from the Butaleja District in Eastern Uganda had been trafficked to the Democratic Republic of Congo as fighters.
Again, these are not children abducted from the streets, rather tempted by convincing elders to attend learning facilities where they are promised, in return for learning the Koran quickly, that they will be rewarded with good jobs. In order to do so they will need to live residentially at a learning centre. They leave with parental consent, only to find themselves taken to DRC and forced into fighting with the rebels. Again, in late Autumn 2013 in one such episode, forty children from the small rural village of Namatoke Village, again in the Butaleja District of Eastern Uganda, were lured to such a 'educational learning centre' on the impoverished and one third Muslim Buvuma Islands of Lake Victoria to be rounded up and trafficked to DRC as ADF fighters.
According to the Trafficking in Persons Report from 2020, estimates determined that traffickers are currently exploiting 7,000 to 12,000 children through sex trafficking in Uganda. The report also outlines how human trafficking in Uganda primarily takes the form of forced physical labuor and sexual exploitation. They go on to work in domestic servitude, brick laying, general and construction labouring, sand mining, stone quarrying, tree planting, cutting, and in other labour intensive industries.
Some later escape and find their way onto the streets. In terms of numbers, recent reports estimate that there are 2.7 million child labourers in Uganda, 12,000 trapped in commercial sex, 10,000 street children and 25-30,000 children abducted from the country to engage in armed conflicts elsewhere.
Add to this the vulnerable 1.2 million children across the country who have been orphaned through AIDS who are particularly susceptible to offers of a better life by apparent philanthropists, and you have an economy ripe for child trafficking especially given that many births aren't registered and therefore missing children aren't even noticed nor, if they do resurface, can prove who they are nor which country they came from.
The term 'child trafficking' itself conjures up images of children being dragged from their families and sold effectively into slavery. However, in Uganda and elsewhere it is often much more subtle than that. Many children aren't sold into slavery, they are given by their poor parents who often cannot provide for them to other family members who promise them a better life and education.
The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) claims 45% of children from households living below the poverty line are forced out of school to work and supplement their parents' incomes, with children aged between 5 and 17 years the worst at risk. However impoverished families have been known to sell their children often for as little as 12 pounds ~ about the going weekly pay rate for a teacher in a non-government private school in Uganda. Others are rented out for labour. For example, in one area children as young as four keep the fields clear by shouting at birds or throwing stones at them. In exchange they are provided with food or a small amount of money before they return to their family at night.
In quarries around Lake Bunyonyi in
south-west Uganda you can see scores of pre and school children
working all hours chipping rocks into gravel under a blazing sun
(left) without protective clothing to shield them from the flying rocks.
Most of these children will earn just 11p for a 12 hour day of
hard labour ~ then have that taken off them by their parent(s) on
returning home.
And this in a country whose
constitution states that children under 16 years of age have the
right to be protected from social and economic exploitation;
should not be employed in work that would endanger their physical,
mental, spiritual, or moral health and social development, or that
would interfere with their education. The Constitution also
prohibits child slavery, servitude, and forced labour.
The
"Trafficking
in Persons Report 2008" concluded "The Government of Uganda
does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the
elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant
efforts to do so."
Five years on, its
still a major problem. The following are identified as the primary causes of child trafficking
in Uganda:
Poverty
Destabilization of the region
and country
Dissolutionment of the family
unit
Armed conflict
Political instability
Gender inequality
Weak anti-trafficking laws
Poor economic development
Lack of sustainable
infrastructure
Lack of interoperability
Poor inter-country cooperation
Low education level
Limited awareness of trafficking
and social-economic precipitators
According to the Trafficking in Persons Report from 2020, estimates determined that traffickers are currently exploiting 7,000 to 12,000 children through sex trafficking in Uganda. The report also outlines how human trafficking in Uganda primarily takes the form of forced physical labuor and sexual exploitation. They go on to work in domestic servitude, brick laying, general and construction labouring, sand mining, stone quarrying, tree planting, cutting, and in other labour intensive industries.
The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) claims 45% of children from households living below the poverty line are forced out of school to work and supplement their parents' incomes, with children aged between 5 and 17 years the worst at risk. However impoverished families have been known to sell their children often for as little as 12 pounds ~ about the going weekly pay rate for a teacher in a non-government private school in Uganda. Others are rented out for labour. For example, in one area children as young as four keep the fields clear by shouting at birds or throwing stones at them. In exchange they are provided with food or a small amount of money before they return to their family at night.
In quarries around Lake Bunyonyi in
south-west Uganda you can see scores of pre and school children
working all hours chipping rocks into gravel under a blazing sun
(left) without protective clothing to shield them from the flying rocks.
Most of these children will earn just 11p for a 12 hour day of
hard labour ~ then have that taken off them by their parent(s) on
returning home.
