MPF Newsletter – Issue #11 – with a contribution from the INSigHT Team on the trajectories of women

In this issue of the MPF (Migration Partnership Facility), the INSigHT Team shared partial extracts fom the stories of three Nigerian women, Beauty, Faith and Joy, who transited along the Brenner route in Italy in recent years. The three stories have various elements in common.

All three women have been facing extremely vulnerable situations, as women, migrants and lone mothers, exposed to trafficking, sexual exploitation, gender violence and institutional violence too. All three spent long periods in reception facilities and detention centres that failed to protect them and their children.

They were all repeteadly forced into mobility by exploitation networks, but also by the lengthy and ineffective procedures of the asylum and social protection systems. All three journeys intersected at Bozen and were impacted by border policies and procedures enforced in the Brenner area and scarcely focused on protection. This was further aggravated by their exclusion from support services dedicated to victims of trafficking.

As reported in more details in the INSigHT reports, particularly the report on Brenner – available on the “publications” page of the INSigHT website, the stories of these women urge for the improvement of the system of referrals between anti-trafficking initiatives and asylum and social systems at the local, national and transnational levels and for the enhancement of the capacity of institutional stakeholders in the identification of victims of trafficking.

The stories generously shared by these women suggest the integration of anti-trafficking initiatives and asylum and social systems at all levels, especially as far as the support to women, mothers, children and other vulnerable groups is involved.

They also suggest increasing collaboration with volunteers, who have had a crucial role in helping and protecting all three women and they stress the importance of improving access to regularisation, as the precarious legal status of people victims of trafficking and migrants in general is detrimental to ensuring access to services.

The contribution to the newsletter is available here:
https://www.migrationpartnershipfacility.eu/news/human-trafficking-along-the-brenner-route-at-the-border-between-italy-and-austria-stories-from-women-mothers-and-survivors#_ftn1

The Brenner report and other reports are available here: https://www.insightproject.net/project/publications/