Lockdown fuels human trafficking

A report on human trafficking has revealed that the vice was exacerbated by the Covid-19 lockdown last year.

The report shows that 214 incidents of trafficking for sexual exploitation were registered between January 2020 and December 2020 which represents a slight drop from the 252 incidents registered for the same period in 2019.

At the release of the report in Kampala, Agnes Igoye, the deputy national coordinator for prevention of trafficking in persons at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, said illegal and labour immigration was the most contributing factors driven by the large population of unemployed youth and increased demand for skilled labour in countries like Dubai, Oman among others.

"The incidents of internal trafficking were highest at 118 representing 55.1%, transnational trafficking had 93 incidents. The majority of the victims were recruited through the use of forged documents, so some of these traffickers’ forged documents are not like the one you see at passport offices to move the victims," said Ogoye.

Since 2019,according to the report, 257 people were trafficked to Dubai, 167 to Kenya, 39 to Saudi Arabia, 5 to Oman, 5 to Abu Dhabi, 3 to Jordan, 2 to Canada,1 to USA, 1 to United Kingdom,1 to Uganda and 1 to Mozambique bringing the total number to 482.

Ogoye noted many of the victims are ignorant about the law.

"Many of these victims don’t even know their rights because after an engagement, they realised that actually they had cases. They could report that they had evidence. We want to emphasise that there is nothing wrong with seeking employment abroad but the thing is that you have to do in an orderly manner and we want you to move when your human rights are not abused," she noted.