Welfare and safeguarding concerns are being assessed at a children's charity after its church in Uganda allegedly endorsed a movement called “Kill the Gays”.
The Charity Commission told Civil Society yesterday that it was assessing wider concerns raised in the media about Watoto Child Care Ministries, registered in the UK.
This comes after Private Eye published an article earlier this month accusing the charity of sending money back to its Kampala, Uganda church, said to fund the homophobic initiative.
The charity’s church is allegedly a vocal backer of “Kill the Gays”, a drive which proposed the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”, Private Eye reported.
In 2023, Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni signed into law “the world’s harshest LGBTQ+ bill”, allowing the death penalty for homosexual acts, the Guardian reported.
Private Eye alleged that trustees of the UK branch hold a controlling interest in Watoto’s Ugandan division, to which they have sent more than £1m in the last two years.
On 3 April 2024, Uganda’s court upheld the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act, which Amnesty International said “fostered a climate of impunity for attacks against LGBTQ people” in the African nation.
Under the act, consensual same-sex conduct can be punished with life imprisonment, while attempted homosexual acts can be penalised with a decade in prison.
Watoto Child Care Ministries has projects in Kampala and Gulu in Uganda, as well as in Juba, South Sudan, according to its Charity Commission listing.
In the UK, it operates in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, as well as crown dependencies Guernsey and Jersey.
The charity, whose children’s choir met Queen Elizabeth during the Diamond Jubilee Pageant at Windsor Castle in 2012, has its UK branch based in east London.
Income from donations and legacies recently surged at the charity from £687,610 in 2022-23 to £952,370 in 2023-24.
In the latter year, Watoto Child Care Ministries had an income of £1.12m, marginally below its total expenditure of £1.14m.
Education, poverty prevention, religious activity and medical intervention including AIDS intervention are among its charitable causes.
In its most recent accounts, the trustees' report stated that the Kampala church was established during “a time of civil war, AIDS epidemic and great civil upheaval.”
Watoto Child Care Ministries declined requests for comment.
