The subdelegate of the Government in A Coruña, María Rivas, participated today in the opening of the ‘Awareness Day on Trafficking 2.0’ organized by the NGO Accem on the occasion of the European Day against Trafficking in Human Beings at the Paideia Foundation in Coruña.
In her speech, the subdelegate highlighted the Government’s commitment to the fight against human trafficking, which, through policies and police actions, helps “consolidate women’s rights; build a fairer, egalitarian and feminist society; and protect victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking.”
At the police level, he highlighted that between 2018 and 2022, the State Security Forces and Bodies released around 130 people victims of trafficking or sexual and labor exploitation in Galicia. A fact that shows that “they are working effectively, and that for all of them the State has response mechanisms,” he said.
At the normative level, María Rivas stressed that the legislative effort developed by the Government allows to improve the mechanisms of response and attention to victims, turning Spain into an “international reference in the fight against trafficking”.
Thus, the subdelegate recalled the ‘Law of Integral Guarantee of Sexual Freedom’, which clearly frames violence for the purpose of sexual exploitation, allowing to expand the framework of response to violence against women; as well as the ‘Protocol of prevention, detection, care and referral of victims of trafficking in human beings’ of 2023, which aims to improve the care of people, among others.
These documents were joined in September 2022 by the ‘Plan Camino’, a measure of the Ministry of Equality that incorporates for the first time comprehensive care with the objective of guaranteeing the exercise of the rights of the victims and promoting their social and labor insertion. This plan is based on measures such as the ‘I Plan of Socio-Labor Insertion for women and girls victims of trafficking, sexual exploitation and for women in situations of prostitution’, which provides tools to help victims recover their lives.
María Rivas pointed out that the only way to end this social scourge is through collaboration and assured that the Government Subdelegation carries out initiatives to facilitate collaboration and the establishment of protocols between organizations, NGOs and the Security Forces and Corps. “We are very aware that in order to reach the victims and put an end to sexual exploitation, we need to collaborate with those who are by their side, the entities that directly work with them on a daily basis,” said Rivas.
In this same vein, the subdelegate appealed to the citizens to also participate in the eradication of trafficking through the application ‘AlertCops’, which comes from implementing a function that allows reporting cases of trafficking and exploitation of human beings, facilitating the collaboration and awareness of the “more than 2 million users that this application already has”.
Accem Day
The day included the training seminar #Disabalatrata, aimed at professionals in the educational field and the third sector, in which the new forms of recruitment and exploitation of victims, adapted to the use of technologies and networks, were presented.
In addition, the organization presented a tour of its work in Galicia against Sex Trafficking, emphasizing two programs, the ‘Program of Integral Care to Women Victims of Trafficking and/or Prostituted Persons’, which have been attended to 198 possible victims in Galicia since its creation in 2019; and the project ‘Novicom’.
In this regard, María Rivas recalled that the project ‘Novicom’, funded by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration and the Fund for Asylum, Migration and Integration (FAMI) of the European Union, aims to promote knowledge, awareness and the implementation of social support actions for victims of trafficking, people at risk of being trafficked or in situations of vulnerability.