Equality proposes not to force victims of trafficking to collaborate with the police to receive protection

"This places their own protection on the shoulders of the victims themselves; they are required to collaborate effectively, which in many they are not in a position to provide," Rosell stressed at a seminar on human trafficking organized by the Institute of Studies of Gender of the Carlos III University.

The PSOE and United We Can have committed to jointly promoting a comprehensive law against trafficking in human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation and Rosell has emphasized the necessary gender perspective, since the vast majority of victims are women and girls.

The current immigration legislation establishes that whoever is irregularly in Spain and is a victim or witness of human trafficking will be exempt from administrative responsibility and will not be expelled if they denounce the perpetrators of the crime or cooperate and collaborate with the authorities, but many NGOs They have warned of the shortcomings of this regulation. A recent example of this is the case of Lili, the victim of trafficking who for years was subjected to violence and persecution. Almost three years after her death, the Women's Link Worldwide organization denounced that the administrations "were aware" of Lili's situation.

Structural failures to detect victims

Rosell has referred to the "Invisible Chains" report that Amnesty International presented in 2020, which denounced the priority given to police control over migratory flows and warned of serious structural failures when detecting victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation. In this context, the Government delegate has recognized a "certain failure" in prevention, protection and persecution policies.

The detection of possible victims, he explained, is almost exclusively in the hands of specialized NGOs, while the identification is in the hands of the security forces and bodies, the same ones in charge of their persecution.

"The most vulnerable are the ones who have it the most difficult", he stressed before defending a system in which the gateway for victims is not only the police and the criminal jurisdiction, but also bets on recovering women and seeing then if they are in a position to initiate the persecution of the traffickers. That the victims who request asylum do not have to confront the State, but that the State "accompany" them, she has insisted.

Rosell has recalled that the urgent plan launched by Equality when the state of alarm was decreed Due to the pandemic in 2020, it also sought to protect victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation and allowed different entities to certify the situation of these women so that they could access the protection network and social assistance.

Among the positive points of Spain, Rosell has highlighted legal assistance to victims, who are not prosecuted for crimes that they are forced to commit, or specialized assistance, but has asked to emphasize the principle of non-refoulement, the right to a safe and assisted return or family reunification. She has also defended the right to economic, physical, psychological, social and symbolic reparation, a right before which the State has "the institutional responsibility of the early detection and identification of the victims"

In addition to a crime, trafficking, in Rosell's words, is the maximum violation of human rights, since it violates physical and mental integrity, the right to freedom, health, dignity, sexual freedom and even a Decent job.