Ceuta and sexual violence

There are realities that remain hidden behind figures, borders, and perverse discourses on security. In Ceuta, this summer, there is one that we cannot leave in the background: the sexual violence that migrant girls, adolescents, and women can suffer, especially when they arrive alone and without a support network.

Since the massive arrivals at the end of July, Ceuta's protection system has been under extraordinary pressure. Save the Children has warned that the lack of identification, safe housing, and specialized accompaniment for minors can increase exposure, especially for girls, to violence, human trafficking, and sexual exploitation.

This is important. Because when protection fails, vulnerability ceases to be just a circumstance and becomes an open door to violence, especially sexual violence. A girl who arrives alone, without documentation, money, family, or a safe place to sleep, is easier to intimidate, deceive, and exploit.

This is where the process of objectification begins. When we stop seeing a person and start seeing only their body. We dehumanize the migrant woman, reducing her to an available, purchasable, or exploitable body. Her story, her fear, and her will disappear, and she becomes a commodity. Poverty, war, lack of papers, or irregular status do not cause sexual violence, but they can be used by those who seek to turn vulnerability into an opportunity to assault or profit.

In this regard, feminist Susan Brownmiller placed rape in a territory that is still uncomfortable today: that of power. She defined it as a process of intimidation that keeps women in a state of fear. Therefore, sexual violence is not just an individual problem. It has to do with power relations and the conditions that allow some people to be more easily exploited than others. And migrant women are a clear example.

Therefore, we cannot talk about trafficking and sexual exploitation by looking only at mafias and traffickers. We must also talk about the demand that sustains the business. The men who live among us and who pay to sexually access women in a position of inequality. Responsibility goes beyond those who recruit or exploit, and this is where we must also point to the huge demand from our own country. Because however much the far-right wants to blame immigrants with their false data and constant disinformation, sexual violence has no nationality.

The response in Ceuta must involve offering more protection, rapid identification of girls and women at risk, safe accommodation, adequate spaces for minors, legal and psychological assistance, and prosecution of trafficking networks and sexual aggressors. And we must also question the demand from our own country that fuels sexual exploitation.

A democratic society is also measured by how it protects those who arrive in a state of maximum vulnerability. We cannot allow any woman or girl fleeing violence in her country to end up suffering sexual violence or to become mere sexual merchandise.