This Monday the Group of experts against Trafficking in Human Beings of the Council of Europe (Greta) publishes his latest report which evaluates the situation of victims of trafficking in Spain, with data dating back from the pre-pandemic situation to last July 2022. This study analyzes compliance by Spain with the Convention on Action against Human Trafficking rights, in particular victims’ access to justice, and issues such as the growth of trafficking for the purpose of labor exploitation, in addition to containing a complete list of recommendations already notified to the Government of Spain.
What worries Greta the most, after the visit of the delegation from Strasbourg to Spain, the meeting and interview with multiple institutions and civil society organizations, as well as the visit to the farm worker settlements in Huelva, is just the last thing. : the level of unquantified labor exploitation in our country. Greta is greatly disturbed by what has been discovered in agricultural estates, but also in tourism and domestic service in Spain. In the report, the experts are concerned «due to the low level of inspections labor exploitation, denunciations and also convictions”. It contrasts that, in comparison with the efforts of the State Security Forces, applying numerous protocols in pursuit of the arrest of traffickers of women for their sexual exploitation, there are more and more »men« and also children »exploited at work« without this reinforcement media couple.
The delegation that visited Huelva “witnessed the living conditions of undocumented farm workers, who live in plastic shacks without drinking water or sanitation.”
To the surprise of Greta’s delegation, which “witnessed the living conditions of undocumented farm workers, the number of male victims of trafficking” has been on the rise. In other words, Spain does not sufficiently investigate men exploited on farms. “There is a significant number of immigrants who are irregularly employed by farm owners,” she says. Greta’s experts went to 25 informal immigrant settlements where there were 914 immigrants, undocumented, mostly from Morocco, Mali and Ghana. “Many more were detected during the harvest, they lived in shacks made of plastic, without access to drinking water, electricity and sanitation,” the experts denounced in the report. They are not paid even minimum wage, and sometimes “not paid at all.”
These irregular settlements of workers They are not exempt from rape and sexual exploitation of women. Taken together, the paper stresses: “The Council of Europe Expert Group is deeply concerned about inaction of the Spanish authorities in the face of this humanitarian problem”, which many NGOs, including Cáritas, come to help. But in Spain, with hardly any workplace inspections, “there is a lack of political will to address human trafficking for labor purposes,” he says.
At the same time, the report bears witness to other examples. That of a Chinese citizen who had many people from his country of origin exploited in a cannabis plantation hidden in industrial warehouses in Barcelona; or that of an exploiter who manipulated the bank accounts he provided to the people who worked for him. In total, he defrauded them of 54,000 euros, he kept the salaries that he himself paid them for his services.
Gaps in detecting the age of immigrants
In another area, that of trafficked people who arrive by sea on our shores, Greta complains that Spain also underestimates the number of child victims of trafficking, especially among immigrants. She does it for multiple reasons. Among others, because the system for assessing the age of immigrants upon arrival is very limited, it focuses on a DNA test but not on checking the person’s physical and psychological development. So if that person, or that child is being treated, it is not discovered. It is worth remembering the bill presented by the Government to solve this gap, which the judges warned about, although it is a project that is in paralysis.
Some return hotly, throwing them into the arms of their handlers again; others are lost in the channels of the Spanish system. According to the Council of Europe, the Government of Spain hides behind the fact that a large part of these menas or unaccompanied foreign minors have a plan: to go to France, Germany or the United Kingdom, so they escape the Spanish protection system.
Therefore, Greta asks Spain to improve the tests it does on children, to not only do the metacarpal test to determine if they are adults or not. In addition, she urges our country not to abandon them, even if they turn out to be of legal age, if she has indications that they may be being treated by a network. She gives the example of two Somali girls who arrived in Spain treated. By not monitoring what was happening with them, one has ended up in Germany treated and another has disappeared. She blames the same thing on the asylum mechanisms at airports, she calls for more detection mechanisms for possible victims of trafficking. Greta attended the asylum office installed at the Madrid-Barajas Adolfo Suárez airport and verified all the gaps in the current system.
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Unaccompanied minors have ended up in foster families
On the other hand, after the meetings held with the NGOs that work in the hot areas of arrival of immigrants, he calls for more interpreters for the people who arrive at our borders, more sensitivity. He says that child protection centers function unevenly in the communities. Of the unaccompanied minors on national soil, he points out that the majority are in Andalusia, the Canary Islands and Catalonia, that 60% of them are Moroccan and that the majority end up in centers for the protection of minors, only 91 have gone to foster families, in Ceuta mainly, he assures.
«The protection of minors varies greatly from one community to another, some communities have reached their maximum capacity in their child protection centers, but there are still a significant number. From 2021 to 2022, those foreign minors with residence authorization in Spain rose from 1,736 to 5,908, and with permission to work they have shot up from 228 to 1,794 between 2021 and 2022, reports the Council of Europe.
Warns about the unfairness of hot returns. A curious example that he gives is that Spain was warned by the European Court of Human Rights after violating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the expulsion of an unaccompanied Malian child from Melilla to Morocco in December 2019.
It also points out that in Spain there is a lack of specialized shelters for child victims of trafficking. Greta “is concerned that insufficient efforts have been made to address child trafficking in Spain, especially unaccompanied minors,” she warns.
Regarding the victims of sexual exploitation by organized networks, regularly women and girls, Greta recalls that a victim of trafficking can already receive compensatory payment from the State, “although up to now there is no record that any have requested it ». She also calls for judges to order more seizure and confiscation of assets from trafficking networks to compensate the victim, although very few traffickers end up compensating victims in legal proceedings, she reveals. Among the sexually exploited women, it also reports that as of January 15, 2023, only 190 had requested supporting documents as exploited women or victims of trafficking, which is a mechanism devised by the Ministry of Equality and approved in May of last year.
prostitutes from nigeria and romania
The report also specifies that during the pandemic, in Spain, when the hostess clubs were closed, the number of inspections in places where prostitution is practiced dropped a lot, which moved to private homes. Exact numbers of trafficking victims are not available, and the figure given by the police “is far below their actual number,” he adds. According to the statistical reports of the Government Delegation against Gender Violence, provided to the Council of Europe, in 2018, NGOs and public entities assisted 4,154 women and 148 girls with indicators of having been treated for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Only 657 of them were formally identified as victims of trafficking by the police.
In 2019, they served 3,313 women and 82 girls with indicators of trafficking in persons for sexual purposes. Only 625 were formally identified as victims of trafficking. 121 According to additional information provided by the authorities, 10,630 women and girls were attended by specialized entities in 2020, and 17,544 in 2021.
Year after year, the nationalities are repeated year after year: most of them are from Nigeria and Romania.
