On September 20, the Council of Ministers approved the Camino Plan to provide economic, labor and social alternatives for victims of trafficking, sexual exploitation and women in prostitution.
The Plan, a necessary and ambitious public policy, establishes specific actions of the Ministry of Equality and other cross-cutting actions to be carried out with other ministries, with the general objective of operationalizing the measures contained in the Organic Law of Integral Guarantee of Sexual Freedom and complementing the actions of the National Strategic Plan against Trafficking and Exploitation of Human Beings 2021-2023 regarding trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation. It is conceived, therefore, as a lever policy that develops all the actions that fall under the competence of the Ministry of Equality regarding trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, sexual exploitation and support for women in contexts of prostitution.
The Camino Plan includes 28 measures in 5 lines of action to be implemented between 2022 and 2026, and an estimated budget of 204 million euros.
The priority of the Plan is to provide a way out for victims through socio-occupational integration. This solution must be accompanied by economic and social alternatives that guarantee women's rights. Therefore, one of the main lines of action to be implemented is to offer realistic ways out of exploitation. In this sense, it is central to link the consolidation of a comprehensive care itinerary for these women, with programmes of access to social and economic rights such as housing, health and employment, three of the pillars of one of the central measures of the Camino Plan, which is the I Plan for Social and Labour Insertion for Victims of Trafficking, Sexual Exploitation and for Women in Contexts of Prostitution (2022-2026).
The Plan also promotes research and data collection. In this regard, the largest macro-survey on trafficking and prostitution in the EU will be carried out. A statistical operation that will make it possible to talk about real figures, mapping the hidden reality of the figures and data on the number of women victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation and those in prostitution contexts.
On the other hand, we will work intensively on the prevention and discouragement of demand, reaching young people and men through awareness-raising campaigns, but, above all, working from schools and from spaces of socialisation that are crucial for this.
At the same time, a multi-agenda detection of victims will be carried out, so that they can access economic, social assistance and sexual and reproductive health rights, and that this access does not depend on the filing of a complaint. To this end, a new accreditation system for victims has already been approved and must be effectively consolidated as soon as possible, so that no woman will have to make her rights conditional on taking the difficult step of filing a complaint against her traffickers and exploiters.
Finally, in a country where 90% of the women that the organisations attend to are migrant women in an irregular administrative situation, the Plan considers regularisation as the only way to make this exit a reality for all of them. For this reason, it promotes access to document regularisation for victims and promotes the analysis of their protection needs in order to guide future regulatory improvements in this area. To this end, an agreement has been reached on which intensive work will be carried out in the coming months, so that all women, especially the most vulnerable, will benefit from all the measures of this agreement.
