CEUTA, Spain, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Some women who entered Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta on July 30 as part of a mass migrant crossing say the hardships of sleeping rough as they wait to be registered are compounded by the threat and fear of sexual harassment.
More than a dozen women have set up camp on a wooded roadside running up to the barbed wire fencing that surrounds the government-run migrant reception centre, near the urban beach of El Trampolin. The facility is sheltering about 700 people, 200 more than capacity, according to local authorities.
Camped outside, the women are sleeping in the open air along with hundreds of other Moroccan, sub-Saharan and South Asian migrants.
Reuters spoke to three women there, who said that some men, also staying in the vicinity, are harassing them.
Authorities say that between 5,000 and 8,000 people remain in the enclave, more than two weeks after 72,000 people crossed from Morocco in a deadly border surge.
Most of them were young men, and many have returned to Morocco, but a significant number of women and children also made the crossing. Police and social services say they are scrambling to expand limited reception facilities in Ceuta, and as of Tuesday, 2,168 children have been registered, along with 500 adult asylum applications as of last week.
Wafae Atid, a soft-spoken 28-year-old from the northern Moroccan city of Taza, told Reuters that as she waits for the Spanish authorities to look at her case, she and more than a dozen other women had set up a makeshift camp with cardboard boxes, inflatable mattresses and blankets as close as possible to a police van stationed at the centre's entrance for safety.
"It's really bad ... A lot of guys are trying to attack the girls every night, sometimes just when you go to the toilet. They follow you," Atid said.
"It's different nationalities, Africans, Arabs."
The SUP, Spain's largest police union, said 15 sexual assaults of varying degrees of severity had been reported in Ceuta since July 30, the significant majority of whose victims were underage. In a statement to Reuters, it said the majority of alleged assaults occurred in the beach and wooded zones where migrants were concentrated. It suggested that many crimes would be difficult to prosecute because of the "generic" information provided by victims.
Women who reported assaults had been attended to by police, judicial and health authorities, SUP added, and they were now being housed in a new centre for sexual assault victims provided by local social services. It called for the expansion of Ceuta police's women and families unit and more civilian safety patrols of the makeshift camps.
Spain's Interior Ministry and police declined to confirm the figure or give further details.
SEXUAL ASSAULT CASES
In a statement last week, Ceuta's court authorities confirmed they had processed three cases of sexual assault of migrant women allegedly committed by Moroccan migrants who arrived in the city during the mass influx.
Two of the cases involved victims who were minors, one who was allegedly sexually assaulted by penetration and forced to sell drugs, another who was indecently touched. In both cases, the accused men have been jailed on remand, while in a third an adult woman alleged that she was indecently assaulted and the alleged assailant's deportation was ordered by the judge.
The deportation of another man who broke into a private home and climbed into the bed of a local woman in his underpants was also ordered on a charge of breaking and entering.
Spanish Interior Ministry figures for 2024, the latest full year for which data is available, show there were 42 sexual assaults and five rapes reported in Ceuta, a landmass that is a third the size of Manhattan and has 84,000 inhabitants.
'SERVICES UNDER PRESSURE'
Spain's Interior, Migration and Equality Ministries did not respond to Reuters questions about the allegations of sexual violence and threat.
Spain's Health Minister Monica Garcia confirmed that medical services had treated five women for sexual violence, and said the most urgent healthcare challenge was putting a roof over migrants' heads.
"The best way to protect women and children is to ensure they are in safe spaces," she said.
On Monday, Migration and Social Security Minister Elma Saiz, also visiting the enclave, said authorities and the Red Cross were distributing 4,000 meals daily along with female hygiene kits, and that temporary reception centres with 1,500 further places were being set up.
The government was committed to providing humanitarian attention, she said.
Several human rights organisations operating in Ceuta or specialised in sexual violence including Save the Children, the UN children's agency Unicef and Amnesty International have warned of the extreme vulnerability of migrant women and particularly girls in Ceuta and called for urgent measures including safe housing and specialist support.
"When large volumes of displaced persons are together in overcrowded spaces, these situations of sexual violence arise," said Lucila Rodriguez-Alarcon, director-general of the PorCausa Foundation, adding it was necessary to segregate toilets and showers by gender and apply the same safety protocols as in refugee camps.
CALLING FOR HELP
Atid said she was unable to sleep at night because she was afraid, instead resting between 7 a.m. and noon in the relative safety of daylight. The women had no access to separate showers, and her periods had stopped with the stress of her situation, she added.
Nonetheless, she said she would rather live on the street in Spain than remain in Morocco, which she said she left because her religious family did not accept her lack of belief in Islam.
Atid's neighbour at the camp, Dikra Tetouan, 20, crossed into Ceuta with her 17-year-old sister Aya. She said women in their improvised camp faced repeated harassment and sexual assault.
"We try to protect ourselves by screaming so that people gather around us," Tetouan said.
Tetouan said police had told the women there was little they could do. Spain's Interior Ministry declined to comment and neither the national police nor Civil Guard immediately responded to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Maria Alejandra Cardona and David Latona; Additional reporting by Victoria Waldersee; Editing by Aislinn Laing, Alexandra Hudson)
