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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 (above) working all hours chipping rocks into gravel under a blazing sun
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 following are identified as the primary causes of child trafficking
in Uganda:
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Child Trafficking Uganda: Volunteer in Uganda
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Child Trafficking Uganda: Street Children
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Child Trafficking Uganda: Sponsor a Child in Uganda
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Child Trafficking Uganda: Uganda Country Profile
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