Migration to Europe: single women face sexual violence

Esther was sleeping on the streets of Lagos when a woman approached her with the promise of a route out of Nigeria and to find a job and a home in Europe.

He had dreamed of a new life, especially in the United Kingdom. Kicked out of a violent and abusive foster home, she had little reason to stay. But when she left Lagos in 2016, crossing the desert to Libya, she had no idea of ​​the traumatic journey that awaited her, forced into sex work and years of asylum applications in one country after another.

The majority of irregular migrants and asylum seekers are men (70% according to the European Asylum Agency), but the number of women like Esther, who have come to Europe seeking asylum, is increasing.

“We are seeing an increase in women traveling alone, both on the Mediterranean and Balkan routes,” says Irini Contogiannis of the International Rescue Committee in Italy.

Its 2024 report highlighted a 250% annual increase in the number of single adult women arriving in Italy via the Balkan route, while families grew by 52%.

Migration routes are notoriously dangerous. Last year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded 3,419 migrant deaths or disappearances in Europe, the deadliest year on record.

But for women there is the additional threat of violence and sexual exploitation, as happened to Esther after she was betrayed by the woman who had promised her a better life.

“He locked me in a room and brought a man. He had sexual relations with me, forcibly. I was still a virgin,” says Esther. “That’s what they do…they travel to different villages in Nigeria to pick up young girls and bring them to Libya to become sex slaves.”

“Their experiences are different and often more risky,” Ugochi Daniels of the IOM told the BBC. “Even women traveling in groups often lack consistent protection, exposing them to abuse by smugglers, traffickers or other migrants.”

Many women are aware of the risks but go anyway, packing condoms or even having birth control devices fitted in case they are raped along the way.

“All immigrants have to pay a trafficker,” says Hermine Gbedo of the anti-trafficking network Stella Polare. “But women are often expected to offer sex as part of the payment.”

Ms Gbedo supports migrant women in Trieste, a port city in northeastern Italy that has long been a crossroads of cultures and serves as a major entry point into the European Union for those crossing from the Balkans. From here they continue to countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

After four months of exploitation in Libya, Esther escaped and crossed the Mediterranean in an inflatable boat from which she was rescued by the Italian coast guard and taken to the island of Lampedusa.

She applied for asylum three times before being granted refugee status.

Asylum seekers from countries considered safe are often rejected. At the time, Italy considered Nigeria unsafe, but two years ago it changed that assessment when governments across Europe began tightening their rules in response to the large influx of migrants to Europe in 2015-16. Since then, the voices calling for greater restrictions on asylum applications have only increased.

“It is impossible to sustain mass migration; there is no way,” says Nicola Procaccini, an MP in Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government. “We can guarantee a safe life to those women who are really in danger, but not to all.”

“We have to be stubborn,” warns Rakib Ehsan, a member of the conservative think tank Policy Exchange. “We need to prioritize women and girls who are at immediate risk in conflict-affected territories, where rape is used as a weapon of war.”

At present, this does not happen consistently, she argues, and while she sympathizes with the plight of women facing dangerous routes to Europe, “the key is controlled compassion.”

However, many women arriving from countries considered safe say that the abuse they suffered for being women has made life in their countries of origin impossible.

This was the case of Nina, a 28-year-old young woman from Kosovo.

“People think that everything is fine in Kosovo, but that is not true,” he says. “Things are terrible for women.”

Nina says she and her sister were sexually abused by their boyfriends, who forced them to work as sex workers.

A 2019 report by the European security organization OSCE suggested that 54% of women in Kosovo had experienced psychological, physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner since the age of 15.

Women facing persecution due to gender-based violence are entitled to asylum under the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention, and that was backed by a landmark ruling by the EU’s top court last year. The Convention details gender-based violence as psychological, physical and sexual, and includes female genital mutilation (FGM).

However, its terms are still not applied consistently, according to charity groups.

“Many of the asylum officers working in the field are men who are not sufficiently trained to deal with such a sensitive issue. [as female genital mutilation] both from a medical and psychological point of view,” says Marianne Nguena Kana, director of End FGM European Network.

Many women have their asylum claims denied, she says, under the mistaken assumption that since they have already been subjected to female genital mutilation, they are no longer at risk.

“We’ve had judges who have said, ‘You’ve already been mutilated, so it’s not dangerous for you to return to your country, because it’s not like they can do it to you again,'” Nguena Kana says.

When it comes to sexual violence, Carenza Arnold of the British charity Women for Refugee Women says it is often harder to prove, as it does not leave the same scars as physical torture, and women’s taboos and cultural sensitivities make the process even more difficult.

“Women are often rushed through the process and may not disclose the sexual violence they have experienced to an immigration officer they have just met,” Arnold explains.

Much of the violence women face takes place during their journey, the International Organization for Migration told the BBC.

“Women often escape sexual violence from their partners in their country of origin and then, during the trip, experience the same thing again,” says Ugochi Daniles.

This was the case for Nina and her sister on their journey from their abusive partners in Kosovo to a new life in Italy. Traveling with other women, they walked through the forests of Eastern Europe trying to avoid the authorities. There, they said they were attacked by migrants and male smugglers.

“Even though we were in the mountains, in the dark, you could hear the screams,” Nina remembers. “The men approached us with a torch, illuminated our faces, chose who they wanted and took them deeper into the forest.

“At night I could hear my sister crying and asking for help.”

Nina and her sister told Italian authorities that if they returned home they would be murdered by their ex-boyfriends. They were eventually granted asylum.

Esther’s fight for refugee status took much longer.

He first applied for asylum in Italy in 2016, but after a long wait there he moved to France and then Germany, where his asylum claims were rejected as, under the EU’s Dublin regulation, an asylum seeker is generally expected to apply for asylum in the first EU country he enters.

She finally obtained refugee status in Italy in 2019.

Almost a decade after leaving Nigeria, he wonders if his current existence in Italy was worth the pain he endured to get there: “I don’t even know the reason why I came to this place.”