Criminal Law Reform and Anti-Human Trafficking
From October 2011 to December 2012, the ABA Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) worked to combat human trafficking in Uganda by unifying existing efforts within the justice sector and civil society via a multi-stakeholder working group. The goal of this group was to enhance functional coordination on human trafficking cases and to organize efforts to support the implementation of the 2009 law outlawing human trafficking. By bringing together government officials, civil society leaders and justice sector officials, ABA ROLI assisted them in taking concrete steps towards combating human trafficking nationally. By the end of the program, several agency-wide task forces were meeting regularly to develop standard operating procedures for combating human trafficking within their agencies and also in partnership with other branches of law enforcement, immigration and judicial agencies. Additionally, ABA ROLI developed a map of relevant stakeholders’ interventions to facilitate better communication, to reduce overlap and to define various actors’ roles and responsibilities for investigating, prosecuting and adjudicating cases of human trafficking as well as for caring for victims.