“All migrants have to pay human traffickers, but women are also expected to pay with sex”

“He locked me in a room and brought a man with him. He forced me to have sex. I was a virgin,” Esther tells the BBC.

“This is what they do: They travel to different cities in Nigeria to select young girls, take them to Libya and turn them into sex slaves,” he added.

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

Many women are aware of the risks but still decide to travel and carry condoms with them or even implant contraceptives in case they are raped along the way.

“All migrants have to pay a human trafficker,” says Hermine Gbedo from the anti-human trafficking network Stella Polare. “But women are often required to provide sexual services as payment.”

Gbedo supports migrant women in Trieste, a port city in northeastern Italy that has long been a crossroads of cultures and serves as an important entry point into the European Union for those coming from the Balkans.

From there they continue their journey to countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

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

Before receiving refugee status, Esther applied for asylum three times, as asylum applications from people from countries considered safe are often rejected.

At the time, Italy viewed Nigeria as an unsafe country. But two years ago, when governments across Europe began tightening their rules in response to the large influx of migrants between 2015 and 2016, that assessment changed.

Since then, there has been an increasing number of voices calling for greater restrictions on asylum applications.

“It is impossible to maintain mass migration. There is no way,” says Nicola Procaccini, a lawmaker in Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government. “We can guarantee a safe life for the women who are truly at risk, but not for all of them.”

“We have to be realistic,” warns Rakib Ehsan, senior researcher at the conservative think tank Policy Exchange..

“We must prioritize women and girls who are at immediate risk in conflict zones where rape is used as a weapon of war.”

Currently, this is not happening consistently, she argues, and although she sympathizes with the plight of women taking dangerous routes to Europe, “the key is controlled compassion.”

However, many women from countries considered safe say the abuse they suffered as women has made life in their countries of origin unbearable.

This was the case for Nina, a 28-year-old girl from Kosovo.

“People think that everything is fine in Kosovo, but that’s not true,” he says. “The situation for women is terrible.”

Nina says she and her sister were victims of sexual abuse by their friends who forced them into prostitution.

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

Women persecuted for gender-based violence have the right to seek asylum under the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention, a right upheld by a landmark European Court of Justice ruling last year.

The convention defines gender-based violence as psychological, physical and sexual violence and includes female genital mutilation. However, according to various organizations, the provisions are still not consistently applied.

“Many asylum officers are men who have insufficient training, either medically or psychologically, to deal with such a sensitive issue (such as female genital mutilation),” says Marianne Nguena Kana, director of the European Network Against Female Genital Mutilation.

Many women have their asylum applications rejected, she explains, with the mistaken assumption that they would not face any additional risk as a result of this practice.

“We have heard judges say: ‘You have already been mutilated, so it is not dangerous for you to return to your country because they cannot do this to you again,'” says Nguena Kana.

When it comes to sexual violence, Carenza Arnold of the British charity Women for Refugee Women says it is often difficult to prove because it does not leave the same scars as physical torture.

Additionally, Arnold points out that women’s taboos and cultural sensitivities make the process even more difficult.

“Women are often subjected to a rushed process and may not disclose the sexual violence they have suffered to an immigration officer they have just met,” she explains.

Much of the violence women suffer occurs during their journey, the International Organization for Migration told the BBC.

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

This was the case for Nina and her sister on their journey from Kosovo as they fled their abusive partners to start a new life in Italy.

They traveled with other women through the forests of Eastern Europe and tried to evade the authorities. According to their own statements, they were attacked there by migrants and human traffickers.

“Even though we were in the mountains, you could hear the screams in the dark,” Nina remembers. “The men got a flashlight, pointed it at us, picked who they wanted and led them further into the forest.”

“At night I heard my sister crying and asking for help,” he adds.

Nina and her sister told Italian authorities that their ex-partners would kill them if they returned home. Ultimately they were granted asylum.

Esther’s fight for refugee status lasted much longer.

He first applied for asylum in Italy in 2016, but after a long wait, moved to France and then to Germany, where his asylum applications were rejected because, under the EU’s Dublin Regulation, an asylum seeker is expected to do so in the first EU country he arrives in.

She was finally granted refugee status in Italy in 2019.

Almost a decade after leaving Nigeria, Esther wonders whether her current life in Italy was worth it given the suffering she endured along the way: “I don’t even know why I came here.”

Subscribe here Subscribe to our new newsletter to receive a selection of our best content of the week every Friday.

And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download and activate the latest version.