Section 1: Interpretation

In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires "child" means a person below the age of eighteen years; "debt bondage" means the status or condition arising from a pledge by the debtor of his or her personal services or labour, or those of a person under his or her control as security or payment for a debt, when the length and nature of services is not clearly defined or when the value of the services as reasonably assessed is not applied towards the liquidation of the debt; "currency point" has the value assigned to it in the Schedule to this Act; "exploitation" includes at a minimum, sexual exploitation, forced marriage, child marriage, forced labour, harmful child labour, use of a child in armed conflict, use of a person in illegal activities, debt bondage, slavery or practices similar to slavery or servitude, human sacrifice, the removal of organs or body parts for sale or for purposes of witchcraft, harmful rituals or practices; "forced labour" means all work or service which is exacted from any person under threat of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered him or herself voluntarily; "Gazette" means the Uganda Gazette and includes any supplement of that Gazette; "human sacrifice" means the killing, mutilation, removal of a body organ, body part or human tissue of a person or the drawing of blood from a person for sale or purposes of performing or furthering witchcraft, a ritual or for any other unlawful purpose; "Minister" means the Minister responsible for internal affairs; "prostitution" means the activities of a "prostitute" as defined in the Penal Code Act as "a person who, in public or elsewhere, regularly or habitually holds himself or herself out as available for sexual intercourse or other sexual gratification for monetary or other material gain"; "public office" means an office in the public service; "public officer" means a person holding or acting in any public office; "public service" means service in a civil capacity of the Government or local government; "pornography" means any representation, through publication, exhibition, cinematography, indecent show, information technology, or by whatever means, of a person engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities, or any representation of the sexual parts of a person for primarily sexual excitement; "sex tourism" means a programme organised by travel and tourism-related establishments or individuals, which consists of tourism packages or activities, utilising and offering escort and sexual services and practices offered for any persons as part of work recreation; "sexual exploitation" means the use of a person in prostitution, sex tourism, pornography, the production of pornographic materials, or the use of a person for sexual intercourse or other lascivious conduct; "slavery" means the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised; "slave trade" includes all acts involved in the capture, acquisition or disposal of a person with the view to selling or exchanging him or her and with the intention of reducing him or her to slavery; "trafficking in persons" means the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of, threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation; "victim of trafficking" includes a person who is being or has been trafficked as per the definition of trafficking in persons provided under this Act.