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BY RICHARD DRASIMAKU
ARUA: Thursday, November 14, 2024
Human trafficking used to be a crime heard of from faraway countries, but now it has come closer to home raising alarm among the leaders in the Arua district and Arua City.
The leaders who are involved in human rights protection called for urgent upscaling of preventive and punitive measures to curb this growing crime.
This was during a meeting to evaluate efforts put by the ministry of internal affairs and its partners to fight trafficking in persons under the better migration and management (BMM) since 2016.
BMM is an initiative co-funded by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development to support a multi-agency taskforce in the districts of Arua, Kyotera, Kasese and Tororo and few others in Karamoja region in migration management, addressing trafficking and smuggling of persons and protection of affected people.
In a fact sheet presented by an official from GIZ, the lead implementing agency, so far 3,793 government actors have been supported in migration management, 2,276 officers trained in the field of investigation and prosecution and 3,203 representatives of vulnerable migrants and trafficking victims trained to improve protection.
The local leaders however have remained cautious, expressing that more still needs to be done to stamp out the vice of trafficking of persons, something they said is growing in complexity and sophistication.
“Uganda is taking center stage as a target for human traffickers because of the ignorance of the victims who are mostly the energetic youths. They are lured online via information communication technology (ICT) because these youths want to live soft lives,” Arua Resident District Commissioner, Swaib Toko asserted.
He called for stepped up efforts by the law enforcement agencies to curb online crime and closely monitor local business activities surrounding children such as day care centers, unlicensed clinics and eateries propriated by foreigners.
“Uganda is a very nice country but people can camouflage to cover up crime. Sometimes the criminals befriend you and stay very well with you to stop you from suspecting them,” he said.
Toko recounted an incident five years ago when an Eritrean national whose names he no longer remembers operated a once popular food joint in Arua City known as Kuku restaurant.
It was the most popular eating place in town at the time because they served bigger quantity of food than most food vending centers and the proprietor personally served government officials, pampering them with goods almost an equivalent of the transport refund.
This foolery endeared him to the people including those charged with keeping and enforcing law and order that they failed to detect the alleged dirty crime of child trafficking underneath his food vending business.
It was only when the long arm of the law followed him from Asmara through Juba the capital of South Sudan and Kampala that the local authorities who had been blindfolded through food woke up in awe.
While on his way to Uganda, the man came via Juba from where he is said to have married an underage South Sudanese girl with whom he fled to Uganda.
And in Arua, he spent the day presenting himself nicely to the people while clandestinely running the opaque child trafficking business under the cover of the dark nights.
“The good thing is he pretended to be law abiding in that whenever he was called to report to police over any allegations, he would rush there as quickly as possible,” Toko said.
That trick also turned out to be his biggest weakness. In an Interpol led operation from Kampala, a fake court order was prepared and slapped on him as an elite squad of operatives waited at Arua High Court premises to punch.
As he reported to the court in anticipation to answer the fake charges, the man was easily picked up like a frozen meal and promptly extradited to Eritrea.
Toko said such incidences should serve as eye-opener for the Internal Affairs ministry and its partners to widen the scope of efforts to combat trafficking in persons.
In deed officials unanimously agreed that more trafficking in persons was taking place both within the sub-region and across the porous borders than is being reported.
Majority of the cases are recorded under other crimes since the police say they find it difficult to provide evidence to prove trafficking in persons when the cases reach to the courts.
Roland Musigwire, an official from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the department for prevention of trafficking in persons highlighted a number of facets through which trafficking in persons manifests itself with deadly consequences.
They including harvesting and trafficking of human body organs, abuse of vulnerability, deception and fraud forced labour, forced prostitution, child marriages, criminal gangs, human sacrifice, debt bondage etc.
Prosecution of suspects in this type of crime are usually hard because police find it difficult to gather evidence and witnesses to aid criminal proceedings in Courts of Law.
In fact nobody has successfully been convicted of human trafficking in West Nile out of the few cases reported in the last two years due to lack of supportive evidence.
According to Noel Tayal, regional coordinator for the Justice for Children, a civil society organization dealing in curbing child trafficking, most cases recorded as defilement start as human trafficking because the children are lured with petty goods before being taken to be sexually abused.
In the half year report for 2024, the organization recorded 148 cases of defilement of which 76 cases were taken to court resulting in conviction of 14 adults and two juveniles
This statistics is considered an understatement of the crime of trafficking in persons going on among the members of the public where the case reporting culture is very poor compounded by complacency towards criminal behaviour.
“If we start visiting homes right now we would round up very many underage girls who are being abused,” he said.
Under the same program, Save the children in partnership with the Japanese Embassy in Uganda established a reception shelter for missing children and children who flee from domestic violence.
Sensitisation events were also taken to Jiako Primary school and Arua Public primary school, Ayelembe primary school and Ikarakafe primary school; Arua public secondary school, Ushindi secondary school, Mvara secondary school and Arua secondary schools.
Arua Comprehensive Nursing school was chosen to represent tertiary institutions because the traffickers are targeting fresh graduates by promising non-existent jobs for doctors, nurses and homecare givers for elderly people in India, Cuba, Libya, Canada, USA and the UK.
