A highlight of our work in Uganda this year has been the launch of important new community prevention projects in under-served parts of the country, aimed at reducing exploitative labour and protecting vulnerable families and communities.
Karamoja is the most north-easterly and remote region of Uganda, where poverty rates are higher than the rest of the country and citizens’ quality of life as measured by the Human Development Index is considerably lower. The proportion of children in child labour in Karamoja, 56% (Uganda National Household Survey, 2022), is thought to be the highest in the country.
Animals returning to the village with their shepherd and a young child, Karamoja. Photo credit: Francesco Ghibaudi, Adobe Stock.
Economic hardship is just one of many reasons why so many children from the region end up being trafficked into exploitative work, both within the region and to other parts of Uganda.
Tackling this is key to the Protection and Restoration of Exploited Children in Karamoja (PREC) project. We have an experienced project team of five staff on the ground in the region, working out of field offices across three districts: Abim, Napak and Kotido.
Hope for Justice is delighted to have this opportunity to participate in the PREC Project and would like to thank the partners that have made this possible: the Dutch humanitarian and development organisation Woord en Daad and TUNADO, the Uganda National Apiculture Development Organisation. Our role in the three-year PREC project, funded by the European Union, is running community-based prevention programmes to improve the economic resilience of vulnerable families and to build awareness and understanding of positive parenting, child trafficking, and child protection. Our role is also provide protection services and family reintegration support for survivors of exploitative child labour.
Alongside our partners, our team is working with:
• Vulnerable households to address the root causes of child labour and forced labour
• Survivors of child labour to address the trauma, stigma and discrimination they experience, and provide them with a safe pathway to freedom, including via a partnership with the Government’s local rehabilitation centre
• Local government officials, community members and businesses to educate and train them on child protection issues, so that they are better able to protect vulnerable children
Over three years, we are expecting to work with 450 households, 1,350 children in the selected households, 60 local government officials, 1,900 community members and 15 businesses, and most importantly to see 120 children removed from exploitative child labour.
Karamoja is a challenging place to work, primarily because of a lack of infrastructure, the need to ensure our staff’s safety and security, and the variable weather – climate change and increasingly unpredictable rainfall have exacerbated the financial instability of many families. With many local people depending on small-scale farming and cattle-rearing for their livelihoods, we also need to account for the times when a family’s or community’s attention and efforts are focused solely on their day-to-day survival and sustenance, versus when are the best times for addressing the kinds of longer-term issues on which we want to work with them.
Aerial view of manyattas in Karamoja. Photo credit: Francesco Ghibaudi, Adobe Stock
Our team have already been working to prioritise their efforts geographically, after screening for vulnerabilities in different parts of Karamoja, and engaging with key officials.
Hope for Justice’s Interim Director of Programmes, Patrick Proctor, and our Uganda Director Florence Soyekwo said: “Many of the children we work with on the streets of Kampala have been trafficked from Karamoja, so it has long been an aspiration to work there and to try to prevent exploitation from happening in the first place. Thanks to this project, we now have a toehold, and we look forward to building out more of a programme in this challenging region in the years to come.”
Hope for Justice is also supporting and strengthening child protection mechanisms in local authorities and businesses. We will ensure that any children we identify who have been affected by trafficking and exploitative labour will be safeguarded and receive the support they need to move on from their experiences.
Objectives of the Protection and Restoration of Exploited Children in Karamoja (PREC) Project:
1. Improve resilience of children and families to prevent and protect against exploitative child labour.
2. Positively influence social-cultural norms in targeted communities to reduce exploitative child labour.
3. Enhance resilience and livelihoods of children, families and communities that are vulnerable to, or victims of, exploitative child labour.
4. Influence government policies and systems to address exploitative child labour.
