The Plaintiffs v. Attorney General and Uganda Veterans Development Ltd: A Critique

Abstract

This article provides a critique of the High Court of Uganda’s
Decision in the Plaintiffs v Attorney General and Uganda Veterans
Development Ltd. It argues that the Court’s dismissal of the
plaintiffs’ case was the result of the Court’s failure to analyse
the legal relationship between trafficking, slavery and forced
labour from both Ugandan and international law
perspectives. This failure resulted from the Court’s inability
to discern the legal difference between the “nature of work”
and “conditions of work” and partly in the “withholding of
information” by the 2nd defendant. Had the Court appreciated
this difference, it would have affirmed that as a part of the
means element, fraud and deception operated to completely
negate the plaintiffs’ initial consent. This Article provides the
legal analysis of these issues in the hope that similar legal
shortcomings will not be repeated again in the future.

Key Words: Conditions of Work – Enslavement - Forced Labour - Nature of Work
- State Responsibility - Trafficking in Persons, Uganda.