Over 30 Burundian Survivors of Human Trafficking Sheltered at the UGANET Rising WomanGBV Shelter and Wellness Center Have Been Resettled

Over thirty, (30) Burundian women that were sheltered at the Rising Woman and Wellness
Center shelter home for the past three weeks have been resettled back into their country.
The women suspected to have been victims of human trafficking were intercepted at a house in
Bulenga, as they awaited to be flown to Saudi Arabia for work, as UGANET learnt.
The women who ranged between twenty and forty years old were brought to the shelter
manned by UGANET, by officials from the Uganda Police Force.
According to Afande Mukalazi Livingstone, a Detective Corporal attached to Old Kampala Police
Station, some of the women were intercepted at a small motel at Martin Road.
“We suspected that the women were victims of human trafficking and arrested their leader.
The suspected criminal is said to be a pastor in Burundi, known as Joseph Ngaruko. We arrested
him at Kkab guest house, but he had in his possession keys to a room in another guest house in
the same area.” Afande Mulakazi noted.

During a search at Pastor Ngaruko’s hotel room, over 55 passports of Burundian nationals were
discovered. Some of them belonged to the women that were eventually arrested by police in a
house in Bulenga.
“This is a racket of human traffickers in Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya and Uganda. We continue
with investigations while the pastor Ngaruko has already been produced in court. “Afande
Mukalazi added.
Police brought the 34 women to the rising woman shelter and wellness center where they have
been receiving shelter, decent meals and counselling.
“Initially, victims like these would be sent to prison as police worked on the processes to have
them resettled, even though ordinarily, they are not classified as criminals. We thank UGANET
for opening up their space and solving this problem.” Said a police officer who preferred
anonymity.
The rising woman shelter and wellness center was opened at the height of COVID-19 lockdown
in 2020, when hundreds of women were seeking for safe space from their partners who grossly
abused them during the time when they could not go anywhere.
“Human trafficking had not been so apparent with our work like now. Our GBV response needs
to properly and coherently show up in such moments. When they got here, we had to
immediately deal with their trauma and so we engaged a psychologist who has been taking
them through counselling. Three weeks later, we see they are better and brighter. We hope
governments will carry on the process such that they can attain their full recovery.” Said Dorah
Kiconco Musinguzi, the Executive Director – UGANET.
Mrs. Musinguzi called upon governments and their embassies to put in place programs that can
address human trafficking and responsive mechanisms.
While these 34 women have had a chance to be returned to their homes safe and sound,
several other victims of human trafficking never get to go back home, with thousands losing
their internal body organs like kidneys, livers and among others.
According to the 2020 trafficking report by the US Department of state, there are between
7,000 to 12,000 children exploited in human trafficking in Uganda. In 2019, the government of
Uganda identified 455 victims of human trafficking, 71 of them national, while 384 were
transnational. The figure was higher at 650 victims in 2018.
Afande Mukalazi noted that the Uganda Police worked with the Burundian embassy and made
temporary travel permits for the women whose passports were missing in order to aid their
travel back home.
The Rising Woman Shelter and Wellness Center is one of the few shelters in Kampala, and the
country at large that accommodate refugees. Since its inception in 2020, the Rising Woman