Igoye seeks to set Uganda free from trafficking

In her article, “Migration and Immigration: Uganda and the Covid-19 pandemic,” Agnes Igoye chronicles 2020 experiences of life during the pandemic and what governments must do to deal with border management and Covid-19.

She explains a scourge that gave migration a never-seen-before stillness, a disease spreading without the recognition of borders or class. Her communication is an exposition of the institutional and operational limitations many countries face in ensuring that people crossing borders are physically, mentally, financially and socially well off. In her view, planning ahead, inter-agency taskforces, better border patrol, international solidarity and research are everything to countries finding their way through the pandemic.

“Before Covid-19, nations concentrated a lot on transnational organised crime. If you are dealing with border management, you have to have a holistic approach because there is health, terrorism and human trafficking.  So, it must be integrated border management,” she says.

Thanks to this article, Igoye’s name is now pasted on the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) website. Two weeks ago, she was presented with the Public Integrity’s Best Article Award and she is still elated with this triumph.

Igoye is the deputy national coordinator for Prevention of Trafficking in Persons at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Recent times have plunged her into the world of writing. While scribbling from her heart, she brings together relevant aspects from the days of her childhood and her career.

“I needed to tell stories of Africa. I realised I had a platform of taking care of other people, by highlighting their issues and I thought it was about time people started listening to me. I had accumulated a lot of experience on human trafficking, both by my story growing up and also the work I have done in counter trafficking,” Igoye says.

After 20 years as a frontline border guard, commandant of Uganda’s Immigration Academy and now coordinator charged with developing measures and policies to protect, assist and support survivors, Igoye wants the world to understand how much more needs to be done to bring an end to the crime of using force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of causing a person to perform labour, sex or exploitation in other ways.

“There is so much going on. Trafficking is not just about sexual exploitation or forced labour or the Middle East. A lot of trafficking happens in our homes with housemaids. We are quick to point out what other people are doing but inwardly, we are doing the wrong things. During lockdown, so many children got pregnant. An unknown racket is removing organs from children and we are silent about it. Many boys are defiled and we do not know about it?” Igoye says.

In 2019, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimated that there are 40 million people, globally, living as victims of human trafficking. About 25 million are trafficked into forced labour and 15 million into forced marriages.

About 70 per cent of these cases happen across borders and majority of the cases involve women and girls. It is recently that IOM has seen a growing number of boys trafficked. In the last decade, statistics have also shown between 15 and 30 per cent of the cases are children with an average age of 11 years.

In Uganda, according to the Uganda Police Annual Crime Report, there was a total of 455 victims of trafficking in persons in 2019 compared to 650 victims in 2018. Of the 455 victims, 71 were victims of internal trafficking (54 female juveniles, 13 male juveniles and four female adults) while 384 were victims of transnational trafficking (42 female juveniles, two male juveniles, 314 female adults and 26 male adults). Female adults were the majority of victims of transnational trafficking compared to males.

It remains difficult for individual countries to estimate the extent of the problem. When Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic, borders closed, but people continued to move through Uganda’s porous borders. With quarantine measures, it has been problematic to distinguish between victims of human trafficking and normal travellers crossing borders.

It is the statistics of such victims that Igoye is fighting hard to bring down. Scholarships on human trafficking have taken her to the University of Oxford, UK and Harvard Kennedy School. It is not until 2017 that she started teaching a class at the latter on child protection.

Igoye has interacted with survivors, who travelled because all they wanted was to board an aeroplane. Other survivors travelled because they were promised a job opportunity.

 “The most dangerous thing is that Ugandans are too trusting. When someone says they are going to pay for your air ticket, food, upkeep and you will only pay back when you start working, you need to conduct a background research on their operations. How well do you know that person and what is their track record? Many have travelled only to be told that there is no job for them. You are thereafter involuntarily initiated into prostitution. If you say no, they ask you to pay back their money and then you end up trapped.  Not everything that glitters is gold,” she emphasises. 

Igoye’s story begins in 1972, in the eastern district of Pallisa. At the age of 14, she witnessed firsthand what trafficking looks like.

“The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels came to our village while we were playing and everyone started running. They were looting so this gave us time to run into the bush. We ended up in a Catholic mission and my family survived. By then, I did not know what that was but as I grew up and joined Immigration services, I finally knew what trafficking was and I got interested in the subject because of that experience,” Igoye says.

Unlike many youth who have an idea of what they want to become in future, Igoye knew she wanted to live a successful life, but she did not know how her dream would become a reality.

“For me, success meant doing the things boys do. That meant going to school because going to school alone was a boys’ thing then. School was Pallisa Girls’ and we trekked 10 kilometres to and from home,” she speaks of her early beginnings.

As she shares her ambitions, she pays generous tribute to her parents who consistently reminded her that she could be anything she wanted.

“My father was the first in the village to take his six girls to school, first man to give his girls land, first man to marry off his girls without bride price. Although he passed on, he made his contribution in empowering us,” she explains. It is this enthusiasm for success that has driven a lot of her decisions. Whereas there is a vision for immigration at the ministry, Igoye speaks of her personal vision.

“I have a vision. After my Master of Arts in Sociology at Makerere University, I enrolled at the University of Minnesota to study human trafficking, policy and prevention. While there, I applied and joined the Clinton Global Initiative and promised President Bill Clinton a rehabilitation centre for survivors to train law enforcement on counter trafficking and be a voice for survivors,” she says.

Her ideal holiday is a speaking tour on human trafficking. Over the last decade, she has spoken widely about migration and human trafficking in Uganda, UK, US, South Africa and Mali. The bigger win for her is ending trafficking but for now, she chooses to celebrate the smaller wins, such as training more people into counter trafficking and supporting survivors. She wants success to be redefined to act as an incentive for young people to find employment in their country.

“I wish our youths who are fleeing their country could have jobs, especially the women in domestic work. Domestic work, globally, is seen as demeaning work. Until the world starts appreciating it, that is when we will solve the issue of trafficking domestic workers,” Igoye says.

“We need education. Look at witchcraft, removal of organs for transplant and child marriages. When you have a mouth, use it to condemn such acts. If you are a writer, write about it and if you are an artiste, sing about it. The law is not enough, we need all societal approaches to prevent it from happening, protect survivors and engage all stakeholders including parents.”

Igoye, has been named one of the most influential people in Africa. She wants to use her experience as ladder upon which young people can build successful careers.

Achievements 2021:

• Best Article   ‘Migration and Immigration: Uganda and the Covid-19 Pandemic’: Published in Public Integrity,             Journal of the American Society for Public Administration

2019:  

• One of the 40 Africa’s most Influential Women (By African Diversity and Inclusion Centre)                  2018:

• Ambassador Clinton Global Initiative University

2017:

• Award by President Clinton for the her work in countering human trafficking • The Josephine S. Vernon Award as most Outstanding Fellow of the Mid-Career Master in Public Administration-at Harvard Kennedy

• Women in Public Policy Programme Award Harvard Kennedy School

• Received the 2016 Diane von Furstenberg (DVF) International Award in the World Summit/United Nations-New York.

2015:

•Named one of 100 most influential people in Africa by New African Magazine.

•One of the 50 emerging global women leaders by the Women in Public Service Project (WPSP)