At the tender age of 26, her dreams were supposed to be just beginning.
Instead, she returned from Saudi Arabia with no luggage, no passport, no words—just a broken body and mind. Within two days, she was dead.
Suicide, the official report said.
But her story is not a one-off tragedy.
It is a brutal reality for many Ugandans trafficked and sold into modern-day slavery and prostitution under the banner of labour externalisation.
On August 7, 2025, at the Uganda Law Society’s Radical New Bar forum, the haunting subject of labour externalisation and human trafficking took centre-stage.
The legal community, activists, and government representatives gathered in acknowledgment that what was once seen as a short-term economic fix has become a pipeline for pain.
“Migration should be by choice, not by coercion or desperation,” said Milton Turyasiima, assistant commissioner for Employment Services at the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development.
But desperation is precisely what is driving thousands of Ugandans abroad and into danger.
According to Turyasiima, the Ministry defines trafficking using three clear elements: the act (recruitment, transportation), the means (deceit, coercion, or force), and the purpose (exploitation).
If all three are present, it is human trafficking.
What many do not realise is how wide and brutal the spectrum of exploitation can be. While prostitution dominates public imagination, it is just the tip of the iceberg.
Victims, including children, are trafficked into cybersex, drug smuggling, forced factory labour, organ trafficking, and, in rare but disturbing cases, “baby factories” where women are used as surrogates against their will.
Recruitment agencies, now a booming industry in Uganda, have become both a lifeline and a trap.
“People pay millions to agents promising legitimate overseas jobs,” Turyasiima noted. “But traffickers have infiltrated these networks, making it almost impossible for desperate job seekers to tell real from fake.”
Ugandans, many barely out of their teens, end up in Gulf countries with seized passports, unpaid wages, and in some cases, are forced to ‘buy back’ their freedom for sums they can never afford. They are trapped, undocumented, unprotected, and unseen.
Officially, 258 recruitment agencies are licensed and monitored by the government, each required to deposit Shs100 million as a financial safeguard. But even with these measures, the cracks are massive.
“We must ask, why do Ugandans leave in the first place?” Turyasiima asked, pointing to youth unemployment (17%) and systemic underemployment.
Externalisation, he explained, was introduced in 2005 as a short-term stopgap to create safe and regulated labour migration and tackle unemployment.
But two decades later, it has become an economic coping mechanism, not a development strategy.
In one chilling comment shared during the discussion, participant Rukirabasaija Kankwenza, watching via Zoom, recounted how a young woman sent to Saudi Arabia as a domestic worker returned with severe mental illness and no personal documents or material belongings.
“She was exposed, she was exported to Saudi Arabia as a domestic worker. In less than two years, she was returned with mental illness and with no material possessions, not even her travel and identification documents.
How she travelled from Saudi Arabia to Entebbe Airport and then to Makindye Police is a mystery.
Imagine thinking your child is in Saudi Arabia and you receive a phone call to pick her up from Makindye Police.
Two days later, she committed suicide at the tender age of 26.
You’d think it’s a movie, but it is agony for her father, Simon Opio, and mother, Norah Esther Mukebezi, for that is what happened to their daughter, Josephine Agadi.
"Our girls are being exported and returned to us damaged beyond repair and justice.”
Robert Benon Jurua, the moderator, read this Zoom comment aloud.
These stories are mounting—and they are not gendered. Boys and girls alike are being trafficked into foreign labour, only to return traumatised, if at all.
The Ministry of Gender has promised to tighten monitoring and vetting procedures.
As Uganda prepares for its demographic peak with over 45.9 million people, every Ugandan trafficked is a policy failure, a family broken, and a future stolen.
Behind every statistic is a name. A child. A parent. A dream.