UGANDA: DOL TDA/TVPRA CHLD LABOR REPORTING

UNCLAS KAMPALA 000364 SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ELAB EIND ETRD KTIP PHUM SOCI UG SUBJECT: UGANDA: DOL TDA/TVPRA CHLD LABOR REPORTING REF: 09 STATE 131995 ¶1. The U.S. Mission consulted with the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development (MGLSD),the Ugandan Police Force (UPF),the Ugandan Human Rights Commission (UHRC),the International Labor Organization (ILO) and several local NGOs to compile this report in response to taskings in reftel. ¶2. Tasking 1/TVPRA reporting: Post has reviewed the TVPRA list and relevant guidelines and does not believe additional goods should be added. ¶3. Tasking 2/TDA: 2A) PREVALENCE AND SECTORAL DISTRIBUTION OF EXPLOITIVE CHILD LABOR: Exploitive child labor predominantly occurred in street vending/begging, scrap collecting, stone quarrying, brick-making, road construction/repair, car washing, fishing, domestic nanny/housekeeper service, bar/club service work, border smuggling and prostitution. In all of these areas, there were likely occurrences of forced labor. According to a 2006 national household survey, more than 2.5 million children aged 5-14 years were working, of these 1.76 million were engaged in some form of child labor, including 1.4 million economically active children under the age of 12. The survey estimated that 5% of children aged 14-17 were engaged in some form of hazardous labor. Several publications containing statistics on exploitive and hazardous child labor were published in 2009. In October, the MGLSD, in conjunction with ILO/IPEC, published an "Analytical Child Labor Baseline Survey" covering the districts in which ILO is currently carrying out its International Program for the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC) activities (Wakiso, Rakai and Mbale). The local NGO "Platform for Labor Action" provided the Mission with a December 2009 draft report entitled "Child Exploitation in Kampala District". In October, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics published the Child Labor Baseline Survey conducted in the districts of Wakiso, Rakai and Mbale. Per reftel instructions, Post will forward copies of the publications to the Department of Labor. 2B) LAWS AND REGULATIONS: Parliament passed, with significant U.S. support, a comprehensive Trafficking in Persons (TIP) law in 2009. Although the bill has been signed by President Museveni, the law has not been published in the government gazette and has therefore not entered into force. The TIP law carries a penalty of life imprisonment for "aggravated trafficking" of children. The law prescribes five years in prison for "related offenses," including the recruitment of a child below 16 years into any form of employment for the purpose of exploitation. While existing laws and regulations generally provide an adequate framework for addressing exploitive child labor, the MGLSD and other stakeholders said poor implementation and enforcement of child labor laws remains a major impediment, and that the principle barrier is a lack of official resources dedicated to combating child labor. The penalty for labor law violations is only $250. If enforced, this penalty could limit the use of children in the informal sector but would be less effective in deterring the use of child labor more lucrative enterprises such as commercial sex work. The TIP law's heavier penalties will assist in this regard. 2C) INSTITUTIONS AND MECHANISMS FOR ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES and COORDINATION The MGLSD is the lead government agency on labor issues and is responsible for the enforcement of all labor laws. Within the MGLSD, two units have responsibility for children's issues: the Child Labor Unit (CLU) and the Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) Unit. The CLU doubled its staffing in 2009 to two full-time, mid-level civil servants responsible for developing the National Child Labor Action Plan and for working with partners such as the ILO to implement national information and prevention campaigns. The CLU also serves as a resource to MGLSD's 44 non-specialized labor inspectors. The OVC Unit has a larger mandate and more resources, including significant OVC funding from donor programs such as funding from the USG President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The government has an established child labor steering committee that includes representatives from the Ministries of Gender and Labor, Education and Sports, Local Government, Agriculture, Health, and other stakeholder organizations such as the National Organization of Trade Unions, the Confederation of Uganda Trade Unions, the Federation of Uganda Employers, the International Rescue Committee, ILO/IPEC, and civil society. The committee last held meetings in March 2009 and January 2010. The MGLSD and other relevant ministries lack sufficient resources to regularly coordinate on child labor issues and often lack communication and coordination within their respective organizations. The Ugandan Police Force's Child and Family Protection Unit (CFPU) has approximately 200 officers who are trained on child and spousal protection issues. These officers are posted at the national, regional, and district levels. At police posts, the officer in charge designates a staff member or police officer to serve as the CFPU liaison officer and to handle complaints and cases that involve child and spousal protection issues. Additionally, in local government offices there is usually an employee who is responsible for covering children and family issues. However, the child labor enforcement and reporting roles of both the CFPU staff or liaison officers and local government officials are not well-defined. Child and human sacrifice, which involves a trafficking element, has received increasing public and political attention. A Deputy Police Commissioner heads a multi-agency Special Task Force for the Elimination of Human Sacrifice (TFEHS),which has representatives from the UPF, immigration, and the MGLSD. This task force helped draft the TIP law. COMPLAINT MECHANISM and CASES REPORTED In coordination with the MGLSD, ILO/IPEC established a complaint system for child labor and trafficking and distributed posters, stickers and pamphlets urging citizens to help "stop modern-day slavery". One poster features an overweight man tugging chained children to work. The handouts provide a phone number for police reporting and two phone numbers for NGO hot lines. However, neither the MGLSD nor the head of the CFPU could provide statistics on the number of child labor or trafficking calls taken by the police or local NGOs. The MGLSD's CLU said that the police phone number on the handouts is the general number for the police and that the operations switchboard had not informed them of any incoming child labor related calls. The CFPU said they had not compiled any reported cases of child labor in 2009 at the national level. The Ugandan Human Rights Commission (UHRC) has district-level offices that log and investigate human rights complaints of all types. The UHRC said they do not keep detailed statistics that disaggregate child labor complaints from other child protection cases, but said they logged 48 child protection cases in 2009. UHRC said most were cases of parental neglect or abuse. All of the cases were referred to other organizations that could directly assist the children. The Deputy Police Commissioner who heads the TFEHS reported that there were several cases of trafficking of children where forced or hazardous labor was involved. More information on these cases is provided in section 2D. FUNDING AND RESOURCES No funding information was available. The MGLSD had only 39 general labor inspectors and 26 occupational health and safety inspectors nationwide, with inspectors permanently assigned to only 36 of Uganda's 90+ administrative districts. This limited staffing and resources only allowed inspections at the largest manufacturing and commercial businesses and precluded inspection and awareness of the extent of child labor in rural areas and the informal sector. The Police's CFPU has a staff of approximately two-hundred officers at the national, regional and district levels. At each police post there is an officer who is either a CFPU officer or a general officer assigned the responsibility of child and family protection cases (mostly parental and spousal abuse and neglect). These officers receive some specialized training on family and child law and care, with the participation of the MGLSD. INSPECTIONS AND PROSECUTIONS MGLSD reported that no inspections specifically targeting exploitive or forced child were carried out and that there are no open cases involving exploitive or forced child labor. ANALYSIS OF COMMITMENT Both the MGLSD and the Police suffer from severe resource constraints. The government has taken positive steps in the last several years to establish national mechanisms to protect children and other vulnerable populations. The 2006 Child Labor Policy was a key step, though the government has not yet finalized its national action plan and resources are insufficient to enforce many of the country's labor laws. In 2009 the government also passed the TIP law, which shows a commitment to putting in place additional legal protections for vulnerable populations, although the government's failure to publish this law has prevented it from entering into force. In 2009 the government increased efforts to research and address child and human sacrifice. These efforts, which include campaigns urging parents to more carefully watch over their children, have assisted in the public sensitization to the rights of children. Assisting the GOU's anti-trafficking programs is a priority for the U.S. Mission. From October 2008 to September 2009, a Senior Law Enforcement Advisor (SLEA) managed a $500,000 TIP program focused on training law enforcement officers. The program successfully trained 178 Ugandan police, prosecutors, and immigration officers. The Mission also worked closely with Ugandan government and civil society leaders involved in the drafting of the TIP law, by funding a "stop modern day slavery " documentary and conducting public and parliamentarian information campaigns to advocate for the bill's passage. 2D: INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISMS FOR EFFECTIVE ENFORCEMENT Information regarding on government funding for efforts to combat child labor was unavailable. However, the UPF's Child and Family Protection (CFP) Unit has a staff of about 200 for handling child protection cases. The inter-agency Task Force for the Elimination of Human Sacrifice (TFEHS) is led by the Deputy Police Commissioner, and also handles cases of child trafficking and forced labor. The Deputy Police Commissioner in charge of the TFEHS has a staff of thirteen officers/employees, without a dedicated vehicle or sufficient communications equipment. TIP - CHILD TRAFFICKING CASES The head of the TFEHS provided information on three cases. The UPF statistics office reported 16 child trafficking cases during 2009, but could not provide detailed information on the cases. Because the TIP law is not yet in force, cases are prosecuted under other laws, such as obtaining money under false pretense, forgery, abduction, and kidnapping. Officials said resource constraints and legal delays hamper investigations and that prosecutors are sometimes unwilling to take up child trafficking and labor cases. One of the 2009 cases involved the abduction and transport of three children to Kampala from Jinja, two hours to the east. Police recovered the girls, returned them to their parents, and arrested and charged the trafficker with abduction. The case was still pending at year's end. In a second case, the police recovered three children in northern Uganda that had been kidnapped and were likely being transported to Sudan for domestic or commercial sex work. The traffickers were charged with abduction. The case remained open at year's end. A third case involves a woman arrested on suspicion of trafficking after police received a tip-off from the parents of a nine-year old girl, alleging that the woman attempted to convince the nine-year old girl to go with her to neighboring Kenya for work. TIP - TRAINING During 2009, the Government conducted extensive training for TIP investigators and first responders with U.S. support. From October 2008 to September 2009, the U.S. Mission's Senior Law Enforcement Advisor managed a $500,000 TIP program that included two two-week criminal investigations course, one to develop TIP instructors and one to train TIP criminal investigators. During the same period, 14 one-day first responder courses were conducted. The Ugandan Police Force institutionalized the one-day TIP first responder course into their in-service training. As of September 2009, approximately 150 officers had received this training from the CFPU. The course includes material on women and children's rights, including identification of trafficking victims and prevention of trafficking. The Mission also produced a TIP first responder pocket manual that has been provided to over 2,000 police, immigration, and Department of Public Prosecution personnel. The police also allowed an NGO to place its social workers in police stations to assist children and other trafficking victims. TIP - CHILD SOLDIERS Uganda was removed from the United Nations Security Council listing of countries that use child soldiers in 2009 following a verification assessment by UNICEF. The Ugandan military continues to pursue the renegade Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and Sudan. Many LRA fighters captured by the Ugandan military were abducted as children by the LRA, and most receive amnesty from the Ugandan government and are reintegrated into society. There have been no attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) within Uganda since ¶2006. 2D) Section II: Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) There are no special units within the MGLSD, the UPF or the judiciary that are specifically mandated to increase awareness, enforce, or investigate CSEC cases. The same resources described above under the child labor and trafficking sections are responsible for CSEC. 2D) Section III: Use of Children in Illicit Activities There are no special units within the MGLSD, the UPF or the judiciary that are specifically mandated to increase awareness, enforce, or investigate children in illicit activities cases. The UPF does have a general Narcotics Unit, but no part of the unit specifically deals with children. 2E) GOVERNMENT POLICIES ON CHILD LABOR: The government published the National Child Labor Policy in December 2009, which contains much of the same information as the initial 2006 child labor policy, but was rewritten and published with pictures and illustrations to communicate the child labor policy to a broader audience. It will be used as a source of guidance on child labor issues at the community level for local leaders, the police, employers, representative of workers and parents. The policy describes the roles of the different actors in addressing the problem of child labor, but falls short of the detail required in a national action plan on child labor. A 2007 national action plan remains in draft form. 2F) SOCIAL PROGRAMS TO ELIMINATE OR PREVENT CHILD LABOR: The MGLSA said the National Child Labor Policy has helped raise awareness of child labor. The Government incorporated child labor as a component in poverty reduction, development and education programs. The government also has encouraged other units working on related social issues such as persons with disabilities, occupational health and safety, and OVC to incorporate child labor considerations into their programming. Many government officials express a sincere intention and desire to work towards solutions, but cite a lack of staff, resources and funding as the major barrier to progress. 2G) CONTINUAL PROGRESSES: Over the course of the year there was significant progress on child labor and child trafficking. The passing of the TIP law and training for TIP investigators and first responders raised awareness of child trafficking crimes. The Government's focus on the elimination of human sacrifice and the work of the inter-agency task force also increased awareness of human rights and created a mechanism for information exchange at the national level. Also, there were slight increases in the amount of staff and resources available to the MGLSD, the UPF, and other agencies to address the problem of exploitive/forced child labor and trafficking. This said, overall, the resources allocated to child labor and trafficking issues is still low considering the likely extent of the occurrence of child labor, child trafficking, CSEC, the use of children in illicit activities, and human/child sacrifice in Uganda. LANIER