Access to Justice and Failure to Identify Women Victims of Trafficking for Criminal Exploitation, Especially Drug Trafficking

Women trafficking is an international issue. The first step in order to provide basic services to their victims is their identification. However, when it comes to criminal exploitation, the failure to identify the victims interferes with these women’s access to justice. In Spain, the failure to identify victims of women’s trafficking for criminal exploitation, especially drug trafficking, has denied access to justice to many women, finding them in prison for drug trafficking judgements, even if the victim is fulfilling all the indicators and protocols for trafficking. This is the case in STS6008/2023, a Sentence carried out on a women victim of human trafficking for criminal exploitation in drug trafficking, charged with prison even with the fulfillment of the indicators for human trafficking. We will expose and analyze the problematic based on the obstacles encountered by this woman in their access to justice in Spain, having the mentioned Sentence already adopted as jurisprudence, which will close the door on the identification of victims of human trafficking, punishing and denying access to justice. Instead, they are being criminalized and punished for a crime they were forced to perpetrate due to their situation of vulnerability. The STS6008/2023 is a set of appeals in which they expose that the characteristics of the woman judged meet the criteria to identify her as victim. However, the decision is based on her not being judged for human trafficking, but for a crime against public health. Both international and domestic protocols outline the importance of the identification of victims by professionals, as many of the victims are not aware of their situation or are afraid and would not speak up. This failure to identify victims by the justice lands a benchmark to deny access to justice to women victims of human trafficking for criminal exploitation, especially drug trafficking.