Uganda has about 7,310,386 children from the ages of 5 -18 years (2018).
Despite its rich natural resources, political instability has plunged the country into economic decline, resulting to famine and leaving it among the world's poorest and least developed countries. More than a third of all inhabitants live below the poverty line.
With the prevalence of AIDS (Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) as a result of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) infection, many children are orphaned. With nowhere to go, many of them end up living in the streets, trying to survive from day to day.
Lack of Food
Majority of the Ugandan children suffer from malnutrition. The country’s northeastern region is very arid and the most affected. They the land is too dry to produce an adequate amount of food, consequently, food shortage is a regular problem. In 2018, around 40% of children under the age of 5 suffered from severe malnutrition.
Health Threat
In Uganda, the mortality rate of children under the age of five is among the highest in the world with 53 deaths per 1,000 live births (2016). Maternal mortality rate is likewise among the highest in the world.
On top of the HIV infection, the inadequate medical infrastructure or inability to access medical care, lack of sanitation, dirty drinking water, malnutrition as well as other viral infections have all contributed to this sad mortality statistic.
Lack of Education
In 2018, around 72% of children in Uganda were not attending school. The SOCOODEIFE team discovered that nearly one out of every ten children in Uganda is uneducated. The majority of them are young girls living in rural areas. In most cases these girls quit schools to go and help their parents meet family needs
It is stereotypically believed that girls should not be sent to school as they just wait to be married. Another factor is that school fees are way too high for parents to be able to afford it.
Child Soldiers
Uganda is among those countries where children have been recruited as soldiers for decades, usually forcibly by abduction. They were forced to live under atrocious conditions and trained to commit violence to other minors and even their own siblings.
A third of these abductions are of young girls who were forced to work and provide food to feed the soldiers. They are also raped or turned into sex slaves.
These young children were subjected to brutal and devastating experiences that reintegrating these children as adults in society can prove to be a real challenge.
Street Children and Child Labor
Many Ugandan children are forced to live in the street when they lose both their parents and have no relatives to look after them. At least 14,830 children are living on the streets in Uganda, most of them concentrated in the capital city of Kampala.
They beg or steal in order to survive. Unfortunately, they become easy prey to child traffickers and drug lords, who lure them with a promise of a better life. Many often end up as sex slaves or in the drug trade.
Work is an everyday reality for about 39.4% of children between the ages of 5 to 14. They are compelled to find work to help support the family. In order to survive, some children leave home and become servants to well-off families or work in dangerous areas.
Child Marriages
The early child marriage is country wide practice in Uganda. Certainly, there is a good number of children, about 67% ,who fall in this situation. Girls who go into marriage before the age of 16 exceeds 51% of the girl’s population in Uganda. The average age of girls who go in marriage is between 12-13 years in most rural areas.
Lack of Identity Documents
Approximately 1 out of 14 births are not registered in Uganda. This high percentage is primarily a result of the inaccessibility of registry services. The cost is also a factor, since the fees required for such a formality remains quite high, despite Uganda’s effort to improve the situation. Various children possess neither an official identity nor a nationality.
SOCOODEIFE
