The number of migrant women exceeded that of men for the first time last year, according to a report prepared by the NGO Jesuits Alboan and Entreculturas, whose digital version was presented this Monday in Madrid.
With the title ‘Invisibilized: migrant women in the clash of borders’, this work seeks to raise awareness of the reality of violence and non-compliance with human rights faced by migrant women in Central America and North Africa.
Among the violence to which women are exposed in these migratory circuits, the report highlights physical, psychological, sexual, economic and institutional violence.
One of the co-authors of the work, Sara Diego, defines this set of violence as “gender-based” and ensures that there are migratory contexts that favor the vulnerability of women, especially in the case of those who travel alone.
“On land routes such as those in Africa or Central America, many women accept sexual violence as a price they have to pay. “Often, solo travelers ‘identify’ a man as their partner and agree to maintain relations with him in exchange for protection,” Sara Diego explained to EFE.
Testimonies like this, Diego insists, are the “base” and the “main value” of the report, whose objective is “ensure respect for human and gender rights” of women throughout the “migration process”.
“As migrants we didn’t know where to look”
This new interactive digital version of the publication, available in printed format since last November, coincides with International Migrants Day.
According to the United Nations, in 2020 more than 146 million women lived outside their countries of origin involuntarily; Angie Torres, Colombian human rights and environmental activist, is one of them.
Torres (1999) was born in Buenaventura, but soon moved to Tumaco, a city near the border with Ecuador and a bastion of drug trafficking and smuggling in southern Colombia.
He “harassment” that his family received from “armed groups” forced them to leave Colombia for Ecuador; Despite the facilities they found to regularize their situation, Torres remembers feeling “loss” upon arrival in the neighboring country, he told EFE.
“Although support networks existed, as newly arrived migrants in a completely new place we did not know where to look. In addition, we had to face a ‘xenophobic shock’ and stereotypes for being Colombians.”
As “woman, black and migrant”Torres urged the authorities of the region to defend the right to asylum, the principle of non-refoulement and the search for durable solutions, as established in the Cartagena Declaration.
The European migration pact, “far” from the human rights
In addition to gender-based violence, ‘Invisibilized’ addresses the problems arising from the externalization of the borders of the United States and the European Union.
Diego affirmed that migration agreements with third countries such as Mexico, Morocco or Türkiye “constitute in themselves a constant and systematic violation of human rights”and which act as a “retaining wall” for people in vulnerable situations.
In the coming days, the new European Pact on Migration and Asylum is expected to be approved, whose current proposal “It is very far from incorporating the gender and human rights approach that we demand”he concluded
Source: Gestion
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