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Ugandan Girls Entering Juba Prostitution Racket
Growing concern that vulnerable youngsters being trafficked or lured by promises
they can make good money across border in Sudan.
By Florence Ogola - International Justice - ICC
ACR Issue 276,
10 Nov 10

Mother-of-four Acullu Rose has not seen her daughter since the 13-year-old left
the family home in Atiak, northern Uganda, to travel to Sudan two months ago.
Rose fears the teenager has been lured into a life of prostitution by a merchant
from Sudan who was doing business in Atiak, a trading centre only 50 kilometres
south of the border.
“I have looked for my daughter and many people tell me that she is in Juba (the ca
pital of South Sudan) working as a prostitute,” she said. “What can a young girl lik
e mine be doing in such kind of business? I know that I am poor – this war has rea
lly affected us – but I have tried my level best to provide for all my children.”
Child prostitution is already commonplace in Atiak, where girls as young as 11 c
an be seen selling their bodies on the street to survive. Typical of many border
locations in Africa, travellers moving between the two countries fuel the sex i
ndustry.
Now officials and activists are concerned that vulnerable youngsters, some of wh
om are already prostitutes, are being trafficked to Juba or, seeing their frien
ds return with fancy mobile phones and smart clothes, enticed away by promises t
hat they can make good money in the South Sudan capital.
At the child protection unit in the Atiak sub-county local government, 15 parent
s have reported that their daughters have gone to Sudan and are calling on the a
uthorities to intervene. The girls are aged between 11 and 17; only one has sinc
e returned home.
Okongo Gabriel, who is in charge of the unit, believes that there could be many
more children who have left home for Sudan, but parents are afraid to come forwa
rds because of what the community might say about them and their family.
Onekgiu Roman, an official in the community liaison department of the central po
lice station in the northern Ugandan town of Gulu, blames officers at the border
post for not spotting children crossing over to Sudan.
“We have links with the police in Atiak and, yes, there are cases where girls from
here have gone that far for prostitution,” he said. “Most of them are told that thr
ough this ‘business’, they are able to earn three times as much as they could in Gul
u.”
The immigration officer in charge of the Nimule border station, between Uganda a
nd Sudan, declined to comment on concerns over children crossing the frontier.
Ojok Felix, a social worker with the NGO War Child Holland, says that his organi
sation has been meeting parents and sub-county authorities in order to find a wa
y forward, and have located some of the girls whose families have reported missi
ng to the police.
“According to our investigations, five girls have been spotted on the streets of J
uba, one has since returned,” he said. “We are working with friends and relatives in
order to bring the girls back.”
Cathy Groenendijk, the director and founder of a small Juba-based NGO, Confident
Children Out of Conflict - one of the few organisations catering for young girl
s at risk of sexual exploitation in South Sudan – says more than half of all Ugand
an prostitutes in Juba come from Gulu and Lira, also in norhern Uganda, and that
many of them are young girls.
With the streets of Juba a dangerous place for young girls, where they risk gang
violence as well as sexual exploitation, she warns that little is being done to
assist these children.
“There is not so much help for children at risk,” she said. “We take all sexually-abus
ed girls between the ages of 6 and 18, when they are willing to go to school. Th
ey have breakfast, lunch and supper at our centre. They wash and go to school, d
o homework and keep their books at the centre.”
Back in Uganda, D’Andrea Weeks, a senior programme advisor with the NGO Child Voic
e International in Gulu, also says that the sexual abuse of children is a legacy
from the days of the country’s civil war.
“During the times when people were in the IDP (internally displaced people) camps,
the cases of children being sexually abused were so rampant we still see it now
,” he said. “Many young girls prostitute themselves for food, money or security.”
Janet, not her real name, has been working as a prostitute ever since she was th
rown out of her family home, aged 11. She is now 16 and can’t see a future outside
the sex industry.
“I did not choose this as the way I wanted to earn a living,” she said. “But the condi
tions I had been living under forced me to move to the streets to sell my body.
After my grandmother died, my uncles refused to pay to send me to school and the
n threw me out of the house. So what was I to do with my life?”
Janet’s grandmother took care of her after her mother died when she was just five
years old.
But her uncles never looked upon her as one of the family, because of the way sh
e was conceived; her mother had been raped by a soldier when she was a refugee i
n an IDP camp. They chased her away and told her to go and look for her father.
Janet says that men sometimes abuse her and she is constantly worried about cont
racting sexually-transmitted diseases.
“Some men don t want to use condoms and I have to give in because I need the money
,” she said. “Others use you and refuse to pay or give you less money than you agree
d.”
She adds that, if you object, they beat you up.
Lira district police commissioner, Azuk Maruk, who heads up efforts to crack dow
n on child prostitution in Lira, acknowledges that there are a high number of un
derage sex workers on the streets, but insists this is changing.
“When I joined Lira central police station in 2009, the level of prostitution in t
he town was alarming, involving underage girls who [should instead] study and be
come better citizens,” he said. “We found that the level of crime, such as robbery a
nd rape, was closely linked to the presence of the prostitutes.”
Maruk says that he responded by rounding up child prostitutes and offering them
counselling. Those who had relatives were returned home, while others were taken
into community care.
“But this has not been easy,” he added.
Eric Odong, programmes director of Child Voice International, says that underage
prostitution is a particular problem in Gulu and Lira. The community and the di
strict authorities are aware of the issue, but despite much discussion have done
little to address it, he added.
“When you go to the nightclubs in town, you see young girls hanging around,” he said
. “Some of them are children under the age of 18, selling themselves for whatever
reasons.”
And Sarita Hartz Hendricksen, the founder and director of the NGO Zion Project,
an organisation in Gulu that gives assistance to young girls and women who were
once involved in prostitution, notes a depressing generational legacy amongst se
x workers.
“We work with women and girls who were once involved in the sex industry,” Hendricks
en said. “Most of them are young girls under the age of 18 who were either forced
by their mothers, or abused by the clients of their mother.”
Florence Ogola is an IWPR-trained reporter.