Prime
Find solutions, not jail for Karimojong women
More than 100 Karimojong mothers were on February 22, 2024 sentenced to one month of community service over sending their children to beg or solicit alms in public places. Photo | Abubaker Lubowa
What you need to know:
- The issue: Karimojong children.
- Our view: The country should be working for inclusive social justice and development for all, including the people of Karamoja.
On Thursday, the Kampala Capital City Authority City Hall Court ordered that 100 mothers from the Karamoja sub-region be sent back home for rehabilitation and a month of community service following their conviction for violating the Children’s Protection Ordinance, which makes sending children on the streets to beg illegal.
In passing the sentence, the magistrate alluded to the rampancy of the offence and the need to “enforce a deterrent” sentence.
This was the second time in as many years that women from the sub-region were convicted for violating the same law. This should be awakening us to the need to address what causes people from a region that is so rich in minerals, but whose people are ironically some of the poorest in the country, to descend on the streets of urban areas of the country.
Many of the convicts are widows with no source of income to look after their children.
Mr James Kinobe, the former State minister for Youth and Children’s Affairs who is one of the architects of the ordinance under which they were convicted, always argued that those on the streets were a push factor behind the exodus and influx of even more children on the street, but we urgently need to have a rethink.
Karamoja has been scarred by successive shocks since about 2005. Droughts, floods, and insecurity combined to exacerbate the poverty situation in a food insecure region.
That made outmigration to urban areas a must if they were to survive even when it was at the risk of exposing them, to abuse, exploitation and working in hazardous conditions.
This, in the circumstances, cannot be looked at as begging for money. It is about survival and the very existence of a people. No amounts of laws, ordinances and convictions will put paid to human beings’ fight for survival.
The country should, therefore, be working for inclusive social justice and development for all, including the people of Karamoja.
We should be making efforts to put in place affirmative action programmes that will facilitate tangible development and economic activity that will in time enable the people of Karamoja have equitable access to the same resources and opportunities available to the people of other regions of Uganda.
We should be addressing the causes of vulnerability and social and economic deprivation which make it less attractive for them to stay there.
That, and not bans on travelling to Kampala, is what will make the women and children from the region, not only make voluntary and dignified returns home, but also make them stay.
