NGOs Fighting Human Trafficking in Uganda: A Guide to Who's Doing the Work

UCATIP - the Uganda Coalition Against Trafficking in Persons - is the central coordinating body for Uganda's civil society anti-trafficking response. Founded in 2012 and supported in part by the EU Trust Fund for Africa, it brings together more than 40 member organizations spanning victim services, legal aid, community education, research, and policy advocacy. The coalition is not a service provider itself - it is the connective tissue that makes Uganda's dispersed anti-trafficking work more coordinated, more strategically aligned, and more collectively powerful than any single organization could be alone.

UCATIP contributed to the development of Uganda's National Referral Guidelines for trafficking victims and supported implementation of the National Action Plan 2019–2024. It organizes training for member organizations in victim identification and case investigation, and maintains the UCATIP directory - a searchable listing of anti-trafficking organizations operating in Uganda, used by practitioners, researchers, and funders to navigate the sector. It also partnered with the Human Trafficking Institute in 2023 to host knowledge-sharing sessions analyzing Uganda's position in the U.S. TIP Report and charting collective action.

The IOM is the UN's migration agency and one of the most operationally significant anti-trafficking actors in Uganda. In a country where transnational trafficking - particularly to the Gulf states - is a well-documented and growing problem, IOM's combination of international reach and on-the-ground Uganda operations makes it uniquely positioned. IOM Uganda operates victim support programs, short-term shelter in Kampala in partnership with the government, and reintegration assistance for Ugandans returning from exploitative labor situations abroad.

IOM Uganda also plays a critical role in data and coordination: it works with COPTIP on the victim referral system and participates in the commemoration of the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, using those platforms to highlight specific systemic issues - including the risks of unlicensed labor recruitment agencies and the need for victims to report through formal channels. In 2024, IOM participated in regional forums with Kenya, Tanzania, and other East African partners to strengthen cross-border trafficking identification and response.

Love Justice International operates one of the most distinctive anti-trafficking intervention models in Uganda - and globally. Rather than focusing primarily on rescue after exploitation has occurred, Love Justice stations trained staff at transit points (bus parks, border crossings, transport hubs) to identify and intercept potential trafficking victims before they reach their destination. In Uganda, where internal trafficking commonly involves moving victims from rural areas to Kampala via bus, this transit monitoring approach catches people at the moment they are most catchable: in motion.

Love Justice Uganda has been led since 2018 by Project Manager Julius-Lutalo Kiyingi, who brought experience from transitional justice and refugee work to the anti-trafficking field. The organization uses data and technology as tools for impact - contributing to the evidence base on transit-point interception that has influenced anti-trafficking practice regionally. Crucially, Love Justice positions itself around the dignity of its work: putting "a human face to the indignity of human trafficking," in Kiyingi's words.

Rahab Uganda is one of the most established and respected Ugandan-rooted anti-trafficking organizations in the country. Founded in 2005 - what began as a prayer group of Christian women from Rhema Ministries became, within years, a registered NGO with a specific mission: to rescue, rehabilitate, and reintegrate girls and young women affected by sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Over 17 years of operation, Rahab has directly transformed the lives of more than 1,235 girls and women.

Rahab runs two distinct service facilities. Its residential shelter in Kasangati-Gayaza provides aftercare services - accommodation, formal and informal education, medical care, psychosocial support, and trauma healing - to child victims aged 9 to 18. Its Drop-In Centre (DIC) in Kampala's red-light district serves both minors and adults (aged 15 to 25) with psychosocial support, early childhood development, health and nutrition services, and economic skills development. This dual model - residential safety for children, community-level support for adults - reflects a sophisticated understanding of how trafficking affects different age groups in different ways.

Rahab's Executive Director, Dr. Annette Twahirwa Kirabira, also serves as Chair of the Board of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Persons Uganda (CATIP-U) - meaning Rahab's leadership directly shapes the national civil society response. Dr. Kirabira's research and practice centers on trauma-informed, client-centered approaches to survivor support, developed through more than 16 years of direct client work.

The Platform for Labour Action is a Ugandan civil society organization focused on promoting and protecting the rights of vulnerable and marginalized workers - the precise demographic that labor traffickers target most aggressively. PLA's approach to trafficking is rooted in labor rights rather than the criminal justice framework: it recognizes that the conditions that make workers vulnerable to trafficking are the same conditions that make workers vulnerable to exploitation more broadly, and that addressing one requires addressing the other.

PLA's community awareness work has been extensively documented in the EU Trust Fund for Africa's reporting on UCATIP. Legal practitioner Lydia Bwiite, who works with PLA, articulates the core insight that guides the organization's approach: "Our people put their relatives and acquaintances into the hands of human traffickers, believing they are helping them." The false legitimacy that traffickers use to recruit - posing as job placement contacts, community leaders, or family connections - is best countered by community-level knowledge about what those tactics look like and how to recognize them before a family member gets on a bus.

FIDA Uganda - the Federation of Women Lawyers - provides legal aid to trafficking survivors and advocates for victim-centered approaches in law enforcement. In the Ugandan criminal justice system, where the absence of formal victim-witness assistance policies has repeatedly been flagged as a barrier to prosecution (trafficking victims receive threats from traffickers during trials and have no formal protection), FIDA's role is to ensure that survivors have legal representation and can navigate proceedings safely.

FIDA coordinates with victim service providers to help trafficking victims access services and provides technical assistance to prosecutors, investigators, and police handling trafficking cases. This dual role - serving victims directly while also building the capacity of formal justice system actors - makes FIDA a bridge between civil society and the state in a system where that bridge is often the weakest link. FIDA Uganda has offices in Kampala and regional centers across the country, giving it reach beyond the capital.

Zuri Styles sits in a different category from the organizations above - it is a registered business, not a registered NGO. But its mission is identical: to prevent human trafficking of vulnerable women in Uganda by empowering them to earn a living without exploitation. The distinction that matters is not the legal structure; it is the mechanism. Where most anti-trafficking organizations operate on grants, donations, and government funding, Zuri Styles operates on commercial revenue - the money that comes in when a customer buys a handmade earring, necklace, or bag.

This commercial model is not a compromise of the mission. It is an expression of it. Founder Lily Katumba's conviction - shaped by years of watching what poverty does to Ugandan women's options - is that dignity-preserving, fair-wage employment is the most durable anti-trafficking intervention available. Not rescue after the fact, but economic alternatives before trafficking can occur. The story of how Zuri Styles began in 2010 is, at its heart, a story about what economic empowerment changes for a woman with nowhere else to turn.

Zuri Styles works with women artisans in Uganda who produce handmade jewelry, bags, and accessories from local and recycled materials. It pays fair wages directly. A share of every sale funds school fees for girls in high-vulnerability communities - keeping them in school and out of the dropout-to-trafficking pipeline. And the brand's training center vision - a dedicated space where women will learn jewelry-making and craft skills in a supported program - is the next step in scaling what began in a muddy garage in Kampala.