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.