Iterview with Manuel Albano, rapporteur for Human Trafficking in Portugal

For the CEINAV project the portuguese team conducted an interview with Manuel Albano, rapporteur for human trafficking in Portugal.

The following is an extract from the interview, read the full Interview here.

CEINAV: Dr. Manuel Albano, can you identify the diverse tendencies that concern Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation?

MA: There are tendencies - note that these are not European tendencies, but mostly national tendencies -  that try to push this issue away from the area of equality, because they consider that this is a criminal problematic, not a gender equality issue. This is against the Palermo Protocol, which clearly states that the focus must be given to equality issues, to gender issues. That means that trafficking must be viewed and worked on from a gender perspective.

Therefore, it’s important to realize that the problematic and the gender view for this doesn’t have anything to do with any theorization. It has to do, objectively, with the main target affected, which are still women. The number of men and children trafficked has also increased, due to trafficking for labour exploitation purposes, such as mendacity. When we work with victims, female and male, we understand that the dynamics are completely different. In other words, a man, when he’s found in this situation, mostly wants to quickly return to his home place. He’s not very concerned with the support that may exist here, what he wants is to go out, to be free, to return back home. A woman has completely different characteristics: she appeals for a more specific support, a more continuous and differentiated help on this level.

The 1st National Plan against Human Trafficking came out from the experience of the Project CAIM. We presented the first draft. We also managed to have the discernment to call someone from the outside, Dr. Fernanda Rodrigues, the project consultant. There were hours and hours, days and days of discussion, in order to achieve something, so we could have the guideline we now have, to establish all those dynamics. This was a process down to top. That’s why people, a lot of them, identified themselves with all the created instruments, because they built them. It wasn’t a process that someone imposed, no, people identified with it. I’d say that, in Portugal, this project is striking and makes a difference in this area, fully; I have no doubt about it.

An example of that was the documentary sponsored by CIG, at the end of last year: it was something that made people think and reflect about this. People talked about these issues in day-by-day situations.