Police dismiss child trafficking allegations

KIGALI - The Rwanda National Police has denied a report by the United States which said children from Rwanda are trafficked into Uganda for sexual exploitation, commercial and agricultural labour. In an interview with The New Times over the weekend, Police Spokesman, Inspector Willy Marcel Higiro said: “There is no child trafficking at all in Rwanda.” “It’s not true, it’s just meaningless. They should substantiate their claims,” the police publicist said. The report, titled, ‘2008 Trafficking in Persons’, issued on June 11 said Rwanda, the DR Congo and Burundi are source countries for women and children trafficked for purposes of forced labour and sexual exploitation. It also indicated that Rwandan girls are trafficked within the country for domestic servitude as well as for commercial exploitation by loosely organised prostitution networks. “Small numbers of children from Rwanda’s Eastern Province may be trafficked to Uganda for work on tea plantations or use in commercial sexual exploitation,” the report said. The report, the eighth of its kind, was released by the US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on June 4 reportedly to raise the level of awareness worldwide and to stimulate action to address the crime of human trafficking. “I can not comment for the case of other countries (mentioned in the report) but in Rwanda it’s not there at all,” Higiro insisted. On child labour, the report said recruiters for a renegade Congolese general, fraudulently promising civilian employment, conscripted an unknown number of Congolese boys and men from Rwanda-based refugee camps as well as Rwandan children from Rwandan towns for forced labour and soldiering in the DRC. The report, however, said the Government of Rwanda was making significant efforts to comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. It commended anti-trafficking prevention efforts by introducing a bill against child trafficking in Parliament. At the local level, the report says some districts such as Nyaruguru in the Southern Province, adopted and begun to implement bylaws preventing child labour, and child labour benchmarks were integrated into district performance contracts (Imihigo). “At border crossings and security check points throughout the country, the National Police questioned men travelling with children without an adult female and inspected suspected irregularities, including any possible indications of trafficking, but such inspections yielded no reported cases of trafficking last year,” added the report. Ends