Uganda Postion Paper GA

Santa Fe Model UN 2010 General Assembly

Mr./Madame President, honored delegates, and distinguished guests:

The Republic of Uganda is honored to be here today in the presence of our fellow delegates and to be a participant in this General Assembly of the United Nations. We understand the extreme importance of the issues at hand, and are committed to tirelessly searching for solutions to them which respect the needs of all nations involved.

On the issue of international kidnapping for ransom, Uganda realizes that this has become an issue of great global importance, although we ourselves have not felt the impacts of it as severely as some of our fellow nations here today. Uganda has faced the issue of kidnapping although it has been mainly been on a domestic scale and ransom has not played a significant role. It has also primarily involved children and been linked to our greater problem of human trafficking.

On the issue of human trafficking, the forced labor and conscription of Ugandan women and children has been one of the scourges of Uganda in our recent history. Women and children are trafficked within the country for the purposes of domestic servitude, agricultural labor, and sexual exploitation, and children are also trafficked internationally with nations in Asia, Europe, North America, and East Africa, primarily as sex workers. Perhaps the most infamous case of trafficking in Uganda was the forced conscription of thousands of Ugandan Children by the Lord’s Resistance Army in the past decade. Uganda has enlisted international support for prosecuting the Lord’s Resistance Army, and is concentrating on attacking other incidences on a more domestic scale. Uganda has suffered much from the horrors of human trafficking, and this issue is of utmost importance to us.

Regarding foreign workers rights, foreign investors are attracted to the cheap labor of Uganda. Many workers are unaware of their rights because of the structure of education within the country. The Ugandan mandate protects citizens, ensuring that the constitutional laws and policies facilitate protection. The rights of Ugandan workers are derived from the international and domestic human rights policies. These policies include the opposition to childhood labor and forced labor.

Although not all of the positions on the docket specifically apply to Uganda, we recognize their great international importance and are devoted to working together with our fellow nations to find solutions that benefit us all.