By Ben Musanje
A silent but terrifying crisis is unfolding far away from Uganda’s borders, leaving thousands of young Ugandan girls trapped in a brutal life of exploitation and suffering in India, and the shocking stories emerging from survivors and activists are now raising alarm across the country as civil society organizations warn that unless urgent action is taken, more lives will continue to be destroyed by ruthless trafficking networks that lure desperate young women with false promises of jobs, education and a better future abroad.
For many years, activists and organizations working to protect migrant workers believed that the most serious dangers facing Ugandans abroad were happening mainly in the Gulf countries, but that assumption changed dramatically when disturbing information began to surface showing that a large number of Ugandan girls had quietly been trafficked to India, where many of them were trapped in terrible conditions that they had never imagined when they first left their homes.
Alex Ssembatya, Director of Diaspora at the Foundation of Uganda Joint Migrant Workers for Peace and Development in the Office of the President and also the Executive Director of Make a Child Smile, says the realization that thousands of Ugandans were stranded and suffering in India came as a painful shock after years of believing that their advocacy efforts were protecting migrant workers in other parts of the world.
Ssembatya who is also the Executive Director of Make a Child Smile explained that for a long time activists believed they were doing enough to defend the rights of Ugandans working abroad, particularly in the Gulf region, but suddenly the reality began to change when reports started emerging that many Ugandan girls had been trafficked into India where they were trapped, sick, crying for help and desperately trying to find a way to return home while no one seemed to be responding to their desperate calls for rescue.
The disturbing reports pushed Alex Ssembatya and a coalition of organizations to take action, and in June last year (2025) a team travelled to India to see the situation for themselves and carry out a fact-finding mission that would reveal the truth about what was happening to Ugandans in that country.
The mission involved a coalition of organizations including the Foundation of Uganda Joint Migrant Workers for Peace and Development, Make a Child Smile, CHER Initiative, the Salvation Army and WIDO International, and the group also received cooperation from the Embassy of India which helped them gather information and understand the scale of the problem.
What the team discovered during their visit was overwhelming and deeply disturbing because they found that nearly twenty thousand (20,000) Ugandans were believed to be stuck or trafficked in India, many of them living in dangerous conditions where they had no freedom, no documents and almost no hope of returning home.
Most of the victims had travelled to India believing that they would find decent work in beauty salons, businesses, teaching jobs or even opportunities for education, but the reality waiting for them was completely different from the promises that had been used to lure them away from their homes and families in Uganda.
Ssembatya says that one of the most shocking discoveries was the system used by traffickers to trap the girls in a cycle of exploitation that is almost impossible to escape because every girl who arrives in India is forced to repay a massive debt of five lakhs in Indian currency, which translates to roughly twenty million Ugandan shillings.
The girls are told that they must raise this money before they can regain their freedom, yet once they arrive they discover that they have no legitimate work and no legal protection, leaving them with only one option that traffickers force upon them.
Many of these young women are pushed into prostitution and told they must sleep with men repeatedly in order to slowly raise the money demanded by their traffickers, creating a horrifying situation where survival itself depends on enduring unimaginable abuse.
Alex Ssembatya revealed that in one of the recordings obtained by his team, a Ugandan girl admitted that she had slept with about four hundred (400) men in an attempt to raise money toward clearing the debt she owed to her traffickers, a number that illustrates the horrifying scale of exploitation that many victims endure.
Each encounter typically brings around eighty thousand Ugandan shillings (Sh80,000), meaning the girls must endure hundreds of such encounters just to approach the amount demanded by traffickers, and those who remain trapped for years may end up being abused by nearly a thousand men during their ordeal.
Many of the victims are kept in houses or rooms where they are locked inside and forced to receive men day and night, while having absolutely no control over who enters, what happens to them or whether they will ever be allowed to leave.
Some of the men treat them violently, others abuse them in disturbing ways that cannot even be fully described, leaving the victims with physical injuries, deep psychological trauma and illnesses that follow them long after they eventually return home.
The moment the girls arrive in India their passports are immediately confiscated by traffickers, removing the only document that could help them prove their identity or travel back to Uganda, effectively trapping them in a foreign country where they have no legal protection.
The nightmare often grows worse because many victims are later dragged into drug trafficking networks operating in India, where criminal groups force them to carry or distribute illegal substances in exchange for small payments or under threats of violence.
Alex Ssembatya says some Nigerian criminals operating in India have been involved in recruiting or controlling Ugandan girls and using them as drug couriers, placing them at serious risk of arrest and imprisonment if they are caught by authorities.
In some disturbing cases, traffickers even treat Ugandan passports as commodities that can be sold to criminals.
Ssembatya described one alarming incident in which a woman returned to Uganda carrying passports belonging to several girls who were still trapped in India and threatened to sell those passports to Nigerian criminals for one thousand dollars each if the victims failed to pay the money she demanded from them.
For the girls trapped in India, this kind of threat only deepens their fear because without passports they have almost no chance of escaping or proving their identity to authorities.
The situation is further complicated by racial stereotypes in India where many locals automatically assume that any black person is Nigerian until proven otherwise, making it even harder for Ugandans to seek help or report crimes without facing suspicion.
While activists work to expose these horrors, organizations have also been racing against time to rescue those who are still trapped.
Emmanuel Wataka, Project Manager of the Salvation Army Anti Human Trafficking Project and the national contact person responding to modern slavery and human trafficking, says investigations by the Salvation Army and other organizations revealed that the trafficking network operates through organized syndicates that move victims through specific travel routes.
Most Ugandans trafficked to India enter through the major cities of Mumbai and New Delhi, where they are later distributed to other states including Pune, Punjabi and Hyderabad where the exploitation continues.
The trafficking networks sometimes move victims through neighbouring countries like Kenya before they board international flights, making it difficult for authorities to detect the illegal movement at Uganda’s borders.
In response to the crisis, civil society organizations began pushing for stronger cooperation between the governments of Uganda and India including the creation of a bilateral agreement that specifically addresses the growing problem of human trafficking.
Although the two countries maintain economic ties, activists say stronger legal frameworks are needed to protect vulnerable migrants and dismantle the networks that are profiting from their suffering.
In October last year civil society groups organized a major symposium in Kampala where representatives from both governments gathered to discuss the growing crisis and explore possible solutions.
One of the key issues raised during the meeting was the ease with which Ugandans can obtain visas to travel to India, a situation that traffickers exploit to move victims without raising suspicion.
Despite the serious concerns, Emmanuel Wataka says the most important step remains educating Ugandans about the dangers they may face if they accept suspicious job offers abroad.
He emphasized a painful truth that many young people continue to ignore, explaining that India itself is struggling with high unemployment and that the jobs promised by traffickers simply do not exist.
Despite these challenges, some progress has been made through the efforts of activists and diplomatic missions.
During their rescue mission, the coalition requested the Indian government to grant amnesty to Ugandans who had overstayed their visas, which previously carried a heavy penalty of about six hundred dollars (600USD), an amount that most victims could never afford.
The amnesty made it possible for hundreds of Ugandans to return home without facing these penalties, and about two hundred and fifty have already managed to return to Uganda during that period.
Emmanuel Wataka said more than one hundred and fifty (150) of those returns were organized through civil society organizations that raised funds for air tickets, secured travel documents and coordinated with the Ugandan embassy in India to process exit permits. Yet the crisis remains far from over.
Keneth Oloka, National Director of the Foundation of Uganda Joint Migrant Workers, says that more than ten thousand Ugandans are still stranded in India today, many of them hiding from traffickers, struggling with illness in hospitals or even sitting in prisons after being forced into illegal activities.
Oloka who is also the Executive Director of Kyeyo Initiative Uganda is now calling on the Ugandan government to urgently allocate funds for repatriation efforts and strengthen monitoring systems at Entebbe International Airport to intercept traffickers before victims are taken out of the country.
He also raised concerns about corruption within the travel system, claiming that some trafficked victims pass through the airport without even receiving immigration stamps on their passports, suggesting that traffickers may be working with insiders.
Keneth Oloka warned that unless serious action is taken to address poverty and unemployment in Uganda, traffickers will continue exploiting the desperation of young people who see migration as their only hope for survival.
With millions of Ugandans living on less than one dollar a day, the promise of earning millions abroad becomes an irresistible dream that many are willing to chase despite the risks.
But for thousands of girls who believed those promises, the dream has turned into a nightmare that continues to haunt them long after they return home, leaving scars that may never fully heal. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
