A group of Ugandans who got trapped in Myanmar after arriving at Entebbe International Airport on May 23. A total of 23 citizens returned home. PHOTO/file
A number of recruitment agencies have devised new tricks to beat the ban on labour export to Oman and other Middle Eastern countries.
A new report by the US Department of State says both registered and illegal recruitment agencies are steeped in the racket of smuggling Ugandans out of the country through neighbouring countries.
This has once more placed Uganda under close scrutiny with the US government placing the country in their tier 2 list.
The government of Uganda in 2016 banned export of the Uganda labour to Oman and other destinations in the Middle East, with which it has no labour export agreements.
But the 2024 US government report on trafficking in person says some licensed and unlicensed agencies are bypassing the ban to smuggle Ugandans through Kenya and Tanzania.
The US report says this has increased the vulnerability to debt bondage of the work-seeking Ugandans because of higher recruitment and travel fees.
“Traffickers also exploit Ugandans in forced labour and sex trafficking in neighboring African countries, Asia, and North America,” the report says.
Data presented by the US state department shows that in 2023, at least 1,006 incidents of human trafficking were investigated, compared to 1,200 incidents in 2022 and prosecutions were initiated against 589 alleged traffickers in 494 cases in 2023, compared to prosecuting 728 individuals in 589 cases in 2022.
The report says of the 589 alleged traffickers, 373 were charged for sex trafficking, 81 for labour trafficking, 32 for sex and labour trafficking, and 103 for unspecified forms of trafficking.
Ugandan courts convicted 130 traffickers under the 2009 Anti-trafficking Act, compared to 73 convictions in 2022. Of the 130 convictions, 68 traffickers for sex trafficking, 31 for forced labour, and 31 for unspecified forms of trafficking.
Many of the cases were attributed to corruption by government officials, including police, immigration officials and officials from the Labour ministry, which the report said accept bribes to facilitate trafficking crimes or to warn traffickers of impending operations and investigations.
The government in 2023 prosecuted 12 of its own officials, including police officers, prison officers, and public officials involved in potential trafficking crimes. Of the 12, three were new cases and nine were from previous years. The report further indicated that two of the 12 cases were dropped because of lack of evidence, and the remaining 10 were still ongoing by the end of the reporting period.
The US government last week warned that Uganda has failed to maintain the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in persons and has placed the country in tier two, with closer scrutiny of its progress in adhering to the minimum standards.
The report also shed light on the Karimojong children who are trafficked to Kenya as sex slaves and in manual labour market.
“Children experiencing homelessness or using the streets as a source of livelihood are particularly vulnerable to trafficking abroad. Some Ugandan girls, particularly from the Karamoja Sub-region, are exploited in Kenya by business owners and employers in sex trafficking and forced labour in Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighborhood,” the report says.
Mr Derek Kigenyi Basalirwa, the deputy national coordinator for Prevention of Trafficking in Persons at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, acknowledged the problem and said Uganda is grappling with trafficking of children from Karamoja.
He said Ugandan officials have in the past visited Nairobi City to ensure the children who are trafficked are reunited with their relatives, but the economic situation back home forces them back.
“Even when you return some, somehow they find their way back because they are used to the country. And the same applies here in Uganda. When you bring them back from Kampala, you may find you’re returning back with them on the same bus, unknowingly or the next day, they return to Kampala on the streets,” he told this newspaper yesterday..
Mr Basalirwa adds that some of the trafficked children financially support their parents back home which forces other parents to willingly sell their children.
“Some other parents in Karamoja have even gone ahead to to sell off or send off their young children to continue the same or to go and join the other partners wherever they are, in Kampala or in Nairobi,” he says.
ADF recruitment
The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) group also featured in the report with details indicating that in the recent past, the ISIS-affiliated group has been recruiting children from Uganda to participate in terrorism activities.
“Observers report ISIS-Central Africa may unlawfully recruit, sometimes with parental knowledge, Ugandan children to join the non-state armed group. In previous years, criminals involved in terrorist networks lured and recruited Ugandan adults and children to Somalia via Kenya to join non-state armed groups, primarily al-Shabaab, sometimes with fraudulent promises of lucrative employment,” the report says.
But Mr Basalirwa says Uganda and Kenya have engaged in the cross-border agreements to address the problems. He said the two countries are drafting a protocol to help stem the vice of human trafficking, which include training of officials from both countries to ensure that they speak the same language while investigating and prosecuting human trafficking culprits.
“One of the things we are doing right now is engaging in regional referral mechanism where we know how to refer the victims even across the borders, which wasn’t there before,” he says.
“Initially when you had a victim of trafficking who is supposed to be handed across the other border, it was difficult because there was no protocol between the governments. Now we have created these protocols and it is going to be easy. We have to just liaise with our counterparts that we are sending so many Ugandans, we have identified here as victims, and we know where to take them and how to handle them,” he added.
Uganda and Kenya have also engaged in capacity building of border officials to ensure the CIDs are speaking a similar language.
“The prosecutors of Uganda are also speaking similar language with the prosecutors in the other country to ensure these cross-border engagements are seamless and benefit the victims,” he says.
Agencies abroad
The findings also indicate that employment agencies based in Uganda and abroad, both legal and fraudulent, recruit Ugandans to work in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, the UAE, and Oman, where, at times, traffickers exploit them in forced labour in domestic work, hospitality, or construction.
“Ugandans who voluntarily migrate in search of employment opportunities are also vulnerable to exploitative conditions. Reports indicate traffickers in Saudi Arabia regularly sell and “trade” Ugandan domestic workers using an online marketplace,” the US findings say.
Also listed among those exploited are the refugees whom the report says are lured both into sexual slavery and forced labour in the settlements and outside.
“Uganda continues to serve as a transit point for migrants seeking work in the Middle East and traffickers exploit this transiting population in forced labor and sex trafficking,” the report says.
Uganda hosts more than 1.6 million refugees, primarily from South Sudan and the DR Congo, while foreign victims from Burundi, Eritrea, Rwanda, Kenya, and South Sudan were identified to have been exploited in Uganda.
The survey also shows that traffickers exploit children from neighbouring East African countries, including Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania, in labour trafficking, primarily in agriculture and domestic work, and sex trafficking in Uganda.
It pointed out that the Cuban government-affiliated professionals, including teachers and medical workers in Uganda, may have been forced to work by the Cuban government and that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea nationals working in Uganda may be operating under exploitative conditions and display multiple indicators of forced labour.
Karamoja children
The report says human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Uganda, and those abroad, including both adults and children in forced labour. Traffickers also exploit women, girls, and boys in sex trafficking throughout the country, particularly in Kampala and other urban areas, in brothels, bars, residential homes, rental properties, and on the street.
“Children from the Karamoja region, particularly from Napak District, are especially vulnerable to trafficking because of lack of economic and educational opportunities in the region. The NGOs estimate that the majority of child sex trafficking victims in Uganda are ethnically Karimojong,” the report says.
Community elders in Karamoja also act as conduits for trafficking, according to the report by forcing the children to beg, and also engage in domestic servitude. In some cases, the report says traffickers force children to meet them at international borders, where they organise markets to sell them into domestic servitude or sex trafficking.
“In some cases, parents knowingly send their children to exploitative situations to send remittances back to the family or force their children to beg to supplement family income,” the report indicates.
