Project Description
Human trafficking and modern slavery remain serious and evolving challenges in Uganda, particularly in border and transit districts characterized by high population mobility, informal cross-border trade, and youth migration. Districts such as Busia, Malaba, Lwakhakha, Tororo, Mbale, Namisindwa, and Namayingo function as major exit and entry points into Kenya and beyond, exposing women, children, and young people to deceptive recruitment, unsafe migration pathways, forced labor, and sexual exploitation. Limited access to accurate migration information, unemployment, and weak community-level safeguards continue to heighten vulnerability in these areas.
In response, The Salvation Army Uganda Territory (TSA-Uganda) has implemented a structured Anti-Human Trafficking (AHT) Project over successive phases, aligned with The Salvation Army’s global Modern Slavery & Human Trafficking Response (MSHTR) strategy and Uganda’s National Action Plan on Trafficking in Persons. Guided by the Fight for Freedom framework, the project integrates prevention, survivor protection, partnerships, advocacy, and evidence-based action to address both the root causes and consequences of human trafficking.
Achievements and Foundations from Phases I and II
Phases I and II of the Anti-Human Trafficking Project established a strong, scalable foundation upon which Phase III is built, combining community-based prevention, survivor support, strategic partnerships, and systems strengthening. During these phases, the project directly and indirectly reached over 200,000 people through structured interventions in high-risk border and transit locations, including Busia, Malaba, Lwakhakha, Tororo, Mbale, Namayingo, and Namisindwa, as well as surrounding commercial trading centers that serve as key migration corridors.
In the most recent phase, the project deliberately concentrated its efforts in 20 identified hotspot communities across these districts and worked through six public schools within the same catchment areas to ensure that children, families, transport-linked workers, traders, faith communities, and out-of-school youth were all reached. Within schools, Rights of Children (RoC) Clubs were established and strengthened as child-led, participatory platforms that promote child protection, safe migration awareness, peer-to-peer learning, and early identification of risks. By embedding prevention messaging within existing school structures and empowering children as active agents, the project enhanced ownership, relevance, and long-term sustainability of its interventions.
At community level, the project adopted a low-cost, high-impact model anchored in trained Volunteer Community Champions, school patrons, and Salvation Army chaplains. Volunteer Community Champions were drawn from respected community members such as local leaders, traders, boda-boda representatives, women leaders, and youth influencers who demonstrated commitment to combating modern slavery and human trafficking and who were well placed to reach groups not easily accessed through formal project forums. These champions served as trusted entry points for awareness-raising, early warning, referral, and follow-up, significantly expanding the project’s reach beyond direct staff engagement.
Similarly, Salvation Army officers drawn from local corps and institutions were trained to integrate anti-human trafficking and safe migration messaging into pastoral care, youth programming, women’s ministries, and community outreach activities. This faith-anchored approach allowed prevention messages to be delivered in trusted spaces and reinforced ethical migration, dignity, and protection values within everyday community life.
A distinctive strength of the project was its emphasis on accountability and sustainability among trained point persons. At the conclusion of each capacity-building intervention, Volunteer Community Champions, school patrons, chaplains, and youth leaders developed individual action plans outlining concrete commitments they would implement within their respective spheres of influence. These commitments such as regular community dialogues, school club activities, integration into church schedules, or transport-sector sensitization were tracked by the project and, in many cases, institutionalized within existing routines.
In parallel, Phases I and II significantly expanded prevention impact through strategic media and digital engagement. TSA-Uganda actively partnered with mainstream radio and television stations across multiple districts to host anti-human trafficking talk shows featuring project staff, government actors, survivors’ advocates, and community leaders. These programmes addressed trafficking risks, safe migration practices, reporting mechanisms, and survivor rights, helping to normalise public dialogue on previously sensitive issues. Complementing this, the project implemented online awareness campaigns through social media platforms, online talk shows, podcasts, and live digital discussions. These interactive formats enabled young people, families, and job seekers to ask questions, challenge misinformation about overseas employment, and access referral information in real time, substantially amplifying reach and relevance.
Beyond prevention, Phases I and II made significant contributions to survivor protection, repatriation, and cross-border collaboration, particularly between Uganda and India. Through sustained engagement with government authorities, diplomatic missions, and trusted partners, the project contributed to amnesty negotiations for trafficked Ugandan survivors in India, reducing legal and administrative barriers to safe return. These efforts, combined with strong partnerships, supported the mass repatriation of over 200 Ugandan victims of trafficking from India, ensuring that returns were coordinated, dignified, and survivor-centred.
As part of its Partnerships and Advocacy pillar, The Salvation Army Uganda Territory (TSA-Uganda) convened a Uganda–India Cross-Border Symposium on Human Trafficking, bringing together government representatives, civil society organizations, survivor-support actors, and international partners. The symposium strengthened cross-border referral pathways, information sharing, and bilateral cooperation, particularly in relation to safe return, reintegration, and survivor-centered case management.
Building on this collaborative engagement, the project has contributed to multi-stakeholder negotiations with Uganda Airlines, alongside partner organizations Willow International, Make a Child Smile, and the Government of Uganda through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ugandan High Commission in India. These discussions have focused on the provision of anticipated airfare discounts by Uganda Airlines for more than 240 Ugandan survivors of human trafficking currently stranded in India. Once operationalized, this arrangement is expected to significantly reduce financial barriers to repatriation, accelerate safe and dignified return processes, and ease the cost burden on survivors, service providers, and government actors, while strengthening a sustainable, bilateral mechanism for future cross-border returns.
A major success of Phases I and II was the project’s survivor-centered Return and Reintegration (R&R) work. More than 25 survivors of human trafficking received coordinated psychosocial support, medical assistance, and livelihood support, complemented by structured follow-up to promote recovery, resilience, and sustainable social reintegration. This work was anchored within The Salvation Army’s global Modern Slavery & Human Trafficking Response (MSHTR) framework and its Return & Reintegration (R&R) Guidelines, which provided clear standards on survivor dignity, informed consent, safeguarding, coordinated case management, and partnership-based service delivery. These frameworks strengthened the quality, consistency, and accountability of R&R interventions and enabled effective collaboration with government ministries, international and local NGOs, faith-based organizations, and bilateral partners. Lessons drawn from R&R case management revealed a clear link between unsafe migration and heightened re-trafficking risk, underscoring the need for prevention strategies that move beyond awareness-raising to include practical safe migration guidance, employment verification, and measures that strengthen household and individual economic resilience.
In addition, TSA-Uganda conducted focused research on the role of communities in combating human trafficking, examining how community structures, schools, faith institutions, transport actors, local leadership, and informal networks contribute to prevention, early identification, referral, and survivor reintegration. The findings confirmed that young women and girls aged 18–35, particularly school dropouts and single parents, are the most vulnerable to trafficking due to poverty, unemployment, low education levels, and deceptive promises of work or marriage, with internal and cross-border trafficking especially through Kenya being predominant. The research further established that trafficking thrives in border communities with porous crossings and weak safeguards, where traffickers exploit informal routes, family networks, and limited verification systems, making unsafe migration a key pathway into exploitation. Importantly, the study demonstrated that strong multi-actor collaboration involving local government, law enforcement, faith institutions (notably The Salvation Army), and community structures such as VSLAs and community councils significantly strengthens prevention, victim identification, protection, and reintegration outcomes. These findings informed the development of two policy briefs shared with government stakeholders and national coordination mechanisms, strengthening policy dialogue on community-led prevention and directly shaping the project’s Phase III strategic shift toward deeper, skills-based community engagement.
At the systems level, TSA-Uganda has become a recognized and trusted actor within Uganda’s anti-trafficking coordination architecture. The project actively engaged in national and district coordination mechanisms, including the Coalition Against Trafficking in Persons Uganda (CATIPU), contributed to the strengthening of survivor-centered referral pathways, and participated in national and cross-border advocacy forums and symposiums. This sustained engagement enhanced the visibility, credibility, and influence of The Salvation Army Uganda Territory and directly supported the implementation of Uganda’s National Action Plan on Trafficking in Persons.
As a demonstration of this institutional trust and leadership, the Project Manager of the Anti-Human Trafficking Project was elected to the Coalition Against Trafficking In Person Uganda (CATIPU) Board. This role positioned TSA-Uganda not merely as an implementing partner but as a strategic decision-maker within the national anti-trafficking movement.
Phase III Overview and Strategic Direction
Phase III is a two-year continuation and consolidation phase designed to deepen impact, strengthen sustainability, and respond to emerging trafficking trends in high-risk border districts. This Phase will build on proven approaches and successes of the previous phases of this project to address identified gaps through a focused three-pillar framework: Prevention; Survivor Support and Empowerment; and Research and Advocacy. Across all pillars, the project emphasizes capacity building, strategic partnerships, and sustainability, ensuring that community and institutional systems are better equipped to prevent trafficking and support survivors over the long term.
Priority One: Prevention – From Awareness to Safe Migration Practice
Under Phase III, prevention efforts will move from broad sensitization to practical, skills-based prevention, with safe migration education embedded as a core strategy for children, adolescents, and young job seekers. Drawing on lessons from survivor R&R cases, the project will equip communities with concrete tools to identify risky migration pathways, deceptive recruitment practices, and fraudulent job offers before migration occurs.
School-based prevention will remain central to the project’s approach, using Rights of Children (RoC) clubs and other school clubs as structured and sustainable platforms for early prevention in high-risk communities. In Phase III, the project will expand to reach a further 5 public schools located in identified modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT) hotspot areas that were not reached in the previous phase, particularly within and around key border and transit towns. Learners in these schools will be empowered as peer educators and child protection champions, strengthening early identification of risks and peer-to-peer prevention, while teachers and school patrons will be supported to integrate safe migration and anti-trafficking messaging into everyday school life, co-curricular activities, and safeguarding structures.
Complementary prevention entry points will include youth groups, sports clubs particularly football teams and the transport sector. Sports clubs will continue to serve as safe youth spaces that build resilience, leadership, teamwork, and life skills while reinforcing positive alternatives to risky migration. At the same time, transport sector actors, including boda-boda riders, taxi operators, and truck drivers operating along major transit routes, will be strengthened as community-based first responders, equipped to identify early warning signs of trafficking, share prevention messages, and link at-risk individuals to appropriate referral mechanisms. Together, these layered entry points will ensure broad population coverage, reinforce prevention across age groups and livelihoods, and embed anti-trafficking safeguards within everyday community systems.
To further strengthen prevention, Phase III will review and contextualize The Salvation Army Europe Zone’s Job Verification Manual for the Ugandan border context. This will inform the development of simplified, community-friendly job verification and safe recruitment tools, enabling communities, school leavers, and job seekers to critically assess employment offers and reduce exposure to trafficking risks. Existing community awareness structures including AHT groups, RoC clubs, and trained champions will continue to operate with technical support from TSA-Uganda and district stakeholders, allowing Phase III to focus on deeper, targeted prevention rather than repetitive sensitization.
Priority Two: Survivor Support and Empowerment – From Recovery to Leadership
Phase III will strengthen survivor support by emphasizing quality care, economic resilience, and survivor leadership. Survivors will continue to access psychosocial support, counseling, referrals, and reintegration assistance through coordinated partnerships with professional service providers and community-based organizations. Beyond recovery, the project will invest in survivor empowerment by supporting peer-support networks, participation in prevention activities, and engagement in advocacy. Community-linked livelihood pathways, including vocational training will promote long-term economic independence and reduce vulnerability to re-trafficking, positioning survivors as active agents of change.
Priority Three: Research and Advocacy – Evidence for Systems Change
Phase III will enhance the project’s contribution to evidence-based policy and practice. In collaboration with research institutions and government stakeholders, TSA-Uganda will conduct targeted studies and develop policy briefs on trafficking trends, border dynamics, safe migration risks, and reintegration outcomes. Findings will inform district and national coordination, strengthen referral systems, and contribute to platforms such as the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development and the Victim Case Management System. Advocacy efforts will ensure that community-level realities and survivor experiences meaningfully inform policy implementation, enforcement, and resource allocation.
Expected Impact of Phase III
By the end of Phase III, high-risk border communities particularly children and youth reached through school-based platforms will demonstrate improved capacity to prevent unsafe migration, identify trafficking risks early, and respond effectively through established referral pathways. Survivors will experience stronger reintegration outcomes, increased economic resilience, and expanded leadership roles in prevention and advocacy. At systems level, the project will contribute to more coordinated, evidence-driven, and survivor-centered anti-trafficking responses, reinforcing The Salvation Army Uganda Territory’s role as a strategic partner in Uganda’s fight against human trafficking and modern slavery.
