2023-07-30 20:00:00
Caracas (EFE).- The increase in human trafficking in Venezuela worries the authorities, the United Nations Organization (UN) and human rights groups that have joined efforts once morest this scourge, which diversifies over time and leaves more and more victims, especially women in border areas.
The Government knows that crime is gaining ground, and for this reason it created a presidential council in July 2021 to combat it, but, two years later, the UN has criticized the delay in the publication of a national plan to slow down, among other risks, the speed with which modern slavers recruit girls for sexual exploitation.
The World Day Against Trafficking in Persons will be commemorated on July 30 without Venezuela having published the eight reports on the subject that the Executive should have presented in the last two years, so there are no exact numbers to quantify the victims.
Photograph showing children selling sweets on the street in Caracas (Venezuela). EFE/Miguel Gutierrez
Despite the absence of official data, there is a collective conviction that this crime traps more Venezuelans living in poverty every day.
mutates and expands
A group of local and foreign NGOs and two United Nations agencies, “given importance to the increase in the phenomenon of trafficking” and “seeing the need to coordinate work on this matter,” created a strategy to deal with migrant smuggling, deceptive job offers, sexual exploitation and all the practices devised by traffickers.
Members of the group explained to EFE that they know of cases of people who leave Venezuela “setting sail in boats” to neighboring countries (Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao), where they are enslaved, almost always by pimps who recruit their victims in various regions. from the country.
“Young women, adolescents and girls continue to be the most vulnerable group, for the purpose of sexual exploitation,” the aid organizations maintain, following recalling that they do not have “official numbers” on the prevalence of crime, although they warn of the “strong increase” in the number of unaccompanied migrant children, who are more at risk of being victims.
Photograph showing a child waiting to clean car windows on a street in Caracas (Venezuela). EFE/Miguel Gutierrez
The NGO Cáritas, which has transit houses in Sucre state, told EFE that it frequently receives groups of Venezuelans deported from Trinidad and Tobago, many of them “injured” or “pregnant” following months of sexual exploitation in the island country. , located regarding 100 kilometers away, to which they had left in search of economic improvements.
In addition, the Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV) has drawn attention to the increase in these cases in southern areas dedicated to illegal mining, bordering Brazil and Colombia, for which reason the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw) asked the State to “combat” this situation and “investigate all complaints of contemporary forms of slavery.”
Institutional performance
One of the UN’s demands on the country is a “specific and exhaustive” law, something that the ruling party is trying to resolve from two parliamentary commissions, in which they work on a legislature that understands the issue as a problem associated with migration.
Photograph showing a child cleaning car windows on an avenue in Caracas (Venezuela). EFE/Miguel Gutierrez
Governments and humanitarian organizations estimate that some 7 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2015, which represents constant and growing border movements, mostly by land, which have created a breeding ground for people traffickers who take advantage of the need of migrants to deceive and trap them in trafficking networks.
For this reason, the Executive is trying to stop massive emigration, supported by the slight economic recovery, while State institutions have allied with the United Nations to establish manuals for prevention and action once morest crime.
One of these actors is the Prosecutor’s Office, which has recently reported the dismantling of some trafficking networks, but in gross numbers -nine detainees in the last two months- falls short of the flood of cases registered by NGOs, according to which in 2022 there were thousands of victims and the situation has worsened.
In mid-2021, the Government published its national plan once morest human trafficking that includes 11 ministries and the Supreme Court of Justice, among other institutions, and promised to join efforts for this crusade, but those who work in favor of the victims They insist that more is needed.
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