The most vulnerable children were those in prisons, the floating and the homeless. About 1 in 4 (36.4%) of the non-household children were working children while 1 in 5 (19.2%) were involved in child labour. The study also found that non-household children dropped out of school and Universal Primary Education in Uganda had not helped them

Fight for Children’s rights: Stop child violence

Regional differences in the proportion and overall number of children living in multidimensional poverty in Uganda and this is where violences are high….Our approach to brighten the future of these children, by engaging the stakeholders and parents and the victims to get justice. During Covid-19 pandemic children are facing tough times, with little supervision from law enforcers and CSOs, as most transports are limited, children easily get sick, their rights to medical attention are limited, as they cant make a choice moreso in rural areas their persistent performance decline in schools is stills a nightmare to uplift as their counter parts in urban areas are ahead of them, the pandemic period has left them with uncertain future, but only to do hard domestic works and in addition they witness their parents fights and quarreling infront of them…..be part of our campaign say no to child violence and support women empowerment

Our modal is to;

Orphans and Vulnerable children in West Nile sub region (Northern Uganda

Uganda Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development 31 Dec 2003

The National Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children Policy (NOP) is the official policy governing OVC of the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MGLSD) of the Republic of Uganda. The policy interprets a vision of a society where all orphans and other vulnerable children live to their full potential, where their rights and aspirations are fulfilled. The Ugandan Government, through MGLSD, is mandated to promote the social protection of poor and vulnerable children. Such children include orphans, those who live on the streets, those that toil under exploitative conditions of labour as well as those that suffer sexual abuse and other forms of discrimination. The HIV/AIDS pandemic has greatly contributed to the huge numbers of orphans and other vulnerable children that are now overwhelming the extended family support systems in the country. This situation is exacerbated by conflict in some parts of the country and other preventable diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis.

Unequal school enrollment

The MoESTS statistics (Table 4) indicate no gender gap in ECD enrolment. While authentic data disaggregated by other axes of deprivation remain limited, it is known that most ECD centres are found in urban areas (90%) in the Central region, and that most are private nursery schools, contributing to both geographic as well as socio-economic disparity in access (UNICEF Uganda, 2011). A similar trend is reflected in the May 2013 report on ECD Cost Benefit Analysis where 81% of ECD services are private and located in urban centres, while 0.7% are day care and also private. Only 16.7% are community-based ECD centres

Orphanage challenges by region

Orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC)Of the 17.1 million children below 18 years (over 50.7% of the population) in Uganda, 11.3% are orphans, 8% are critically vulnerable and 43% are moderately vulnerable (MoGLSD, 2011 and UBOS, 2014a). Of those who are orphaned, 46% (1,108,080) have lost their parents through AIDS (GoU, 2013). High child mortality before the age of five years, malnutrition, abuse, inadequate access to education, increase in commercial exploitation, and neglect are prevalent in the lives of OVC. According to the UDHS (2011), 18% of house-holds have orphans and close to one-third of households have foster children (UBOS and ICF International, 2012)

Child Marriage

According to the UDHS (2011) report, 49% of women aged 20–49 years were married before the age of 18 and 15% by the age of 15 years (UBOS and ICF International, 2012) while 9% of males were married by the age of 18 and 25% by the age of 20. The UDHS also found that 58% of 19-year-old teenaged girls, 37% of 18-year-olds, 21% of 17-year-olds, 9% of 16-year-olds and 2% of 15-year-olds had already begun child bearing. Factors affecting the likelihood of early child bearing include education (45% of teenagers aged 15–19 years who have no education give birth in their teens), poverty (34% in the lowest wealth quantile) and region, with girls in the eastern part of the country more likely to begin child bearing before the age of 20

Child Trafficking

Although Uganda has not ratified the Palermo Protocol (2000) , it has a Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act (2009) which is in harmony with the Palermo Protocol and defines trafficking as ‘the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation’.

Growing incidents of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking in the country. A recent survey showed that 7% of girls and 3% of boys were reported to have been trafficked, while a comparative study suggested that almost 10% of 500 girls interviewed in the slums of Kampala had been trafficked (ILo, 2007). The latter suggests that the majority of girls were trafficked at the ages of 14–17, with only a small minority being trafficked at an earlier age. Almost all (35 of 50 women) were forced into prostitution. Trafficking is associated with multiple risk factors but, as studies show, gender-related vulnerabilities are the most significant. Children with orphan status (either due to HIV/AIDS or conflict), children from poor households, children out of school, children who live and/or work on the street, children separated from their parents, children with low formal education, and children living in violent households are particularly at risk of being trafficked.

Women and children are trafficked from numerous regions (MoGLSD et al., 2014: 103), with more children being trafficked internally than across borders. Trafficking for sexual exploitation affects mainly women and girls, and many of the girls are trafficked by guardians (if they are orphans) or by their parents if they are the children of polygamous marriages or homes where their parents cannot provide for them (MoGLSD et al., 2014: 103). Trafficked children are often recruited and sold to serve as domestic workers, child soldiers, street beggars, bar and restaurant attendants, commercial sex workers, workers at night clubs and vendors, ‘with no access to education, no freedom of movement and working long hours in poor conditions for little or no pay’