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Alex Turyaritunga has first-hand experience of child exploitation, albeit of a more extreme kind. "I was a child soldier, nothing can take that away from my memory," he tells the BBC. "I remember the war in 1994. I had a gun around my shoulder." Today, Mr Turyaritunga is a nurse with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Uganda. He was raised in Kabale, a town nestled in the hills of south-west Uganda. Standing on the hillside, children play in Rwandan schoolyards on the other side of the steep inclines of Kabale. But in the mid-1990s, during the time of the Rwandan genocide, it was the sound of war that echoed across the border.
After the death of his father when he was a young child, he says that he was lost and without direction until members of the Catholic Church helped his mother pay for his education and that of his four siblings. "They helped me be what I am today," he says. Now, aged 32, Mr Turyaritunga's view on the Catholic Church has changed. Earlier this year, Mr Turyaritunga made allegations to the BBC about child labour taking place on Church-owned land in Kabale. He alleged that children as young as 10 were working on a tea plantation on the land, and that the Catholic Church was profiting.
Young Ugandans welcomed Pope Francis to the capital Kampala in November
Child labour is without doubt a big issue in Uganda, where the UN estimates that there are three million child workers. The latest figures estimate that 30% of children aged between five and 14 are engaged in child labour, despite 14 being the earliest age where it is legal for a child to work. When we arrived in Kabale, we were introduced to a supervisor at the enterprise who spoke to us on the condition that we kept his identity secret. The supervisor told us that children did work on the farm. Their pay ranged from 1,000 Ugandan shillings (20p; $0.30) to 2,000 Ugandan shillings per day. The supervisor said that the land was owned by the Roman Catholic Church but it was in business with the supervisor's employer: Kigezi Highland Tea Limited.
Fourteen-year-old Brian works on the plantation to earn money for school fees
When the BBC team visited the farm there were up to 15 children working along with adults from the local community. Their work consisted of gathering young tea plants stacked at the bottom of a steep hill and carrying them up the steep hill to the location of the desired point of cultivation. Children were also tasked with weeding the rows of tea plants. In an effort to determine exactly who owned the plantation, we went to the local land registry and sought proof that the land belonged to the Church.
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