Busoga, Karamoja most vulnerable for human trafficking

The head of police human trafficking department, Moses Binoga has revealed that Busoga sub-region and Karamoja are the most vulnerable districts for child trafficking internally while Kampala and Wakiso lead in transnational human trafficking.

Internally, he said that most of the people trafficked are brought to Kampala, Jinja and Wakiso for domestic work and sexual exploitation. They are mostly below the age of 18.

Binoga stated that in 2016, they registered 57 victims, out of which 41 are girls below the age of 18, one is a young boy, while the remaining 15 are adults. The districts where these children are got from include Napak, Mayuge, Busia, parts of Teso and Iganga.

On transnational human trafficking, he noted that the most vulnerable districts are Kampala, Wakiso, Mukono, Ntugamo, Masaka, Jinja, Busia, Bugiri, Iganga, Kamuli, Sironko, Kasese, Butaleja and Tororo.

In 2016, the police registered 226 victims out of which six were underage girls and five were underage boys, 28 were male adults and the remaining were women considered to be of an adult age.

"We were also able to intercept 238 potential victims at our various border points as they were trying to cross the country. 231 were female and seven were male," he told New Vision in an interview.

Prosecution of the cases

While making a presentation on the challenges of prosecuting human trafficking offences, a Principal State Attorney in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Rachel Bikhole said out 125 cases they received in 2016, 25 were prosecuted while only 12 convictions were got.

Her presentation was delivered at Sheraton hotel where the Judiciary and the United States' University of Pepperdine are holding a two day conference on the prevention of trafficking in persons under the theme ‘justice for victims-accountability for traffickers'. The conference is being facilitated by the Human Trafficking Institute which is part of Pepperdine.

The conference attracted the various Justice Law and Order Sector stakeholders and experts in tackling human trafficking cases both from Uganda and the United States of America.

Bikhole, noted that the major challenge they face is the definition of the offence under the Prevention of trafficking in of persons Act which is too long and not easily understandable.

"The challenge here is that the definition is very long, it's not a definition you can easily comprehend like that of other offences such as murder. This affects the quality of investigations because in most cases the investigators do not understand the ingredients of the case they are investigating," she said.

She said that when the investigators fail to understand the substance of the case, they too are unable to thorough prove the case in the courts of law.

She also said that the requirement by the Act to have the ODPP to obtain a written consent from the Attorney General before commencing the prosecution of an extra-territorial human trafficking offence is limiting since the Attorney General can sometimes politicize the issue.

The Act defines trafficking in persons as a means the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.

"This crime is new and sophisticated. It's not so much understood by the investigators and many times they do not have copies of the law books," said Rebecca Namugenyi the Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) attached to the Criminal Investigations Division (CID).

She said that though the Prevention of trafficking in Persons Act 2009 was enacted, most of the police investigators are not familiar with its contents since the hard copies of the law are few in circulation, making it hard for them to conclusively investigate and bring to book the perpetrators.

"It is such a challenge that they don't have so much to refer to and are also still fighting, trying to familiarize with the law and the offence itself yet the crime in becoming worse every day," she noted.

other challenges they noted include limited finances, lack of stringent monitoring mechanisms for the labour exporting companies, granting bail to the offenders, victims are more interested in compensations, prolonged adjournments, lack of proper victim protection and support mechanism and lack of a specialized police unit to handle the crime.