Girls swimming to Spain's Ceuta: the cost of leaving them unprotected

Girls who swim to Ceuta end up on the street: the cost of leaving them unprotected

She is 17 years old, swam across the Strait and had spent three days on the same corner of the El Príncipe neighbourhood when Zohra Mohamed, a 62-year-old woman with 11 grandchildren, decided she would not spend another night out in the open. There is no NGO behind it: it is the women of the neighbourhood, turned into "new mothers" for the girls who arrive alone. Police are investigating five alleged rapes. The State, meanwhile, is nowhere to be seen.

Neighbours' response fills the void left by the State

Zohra Mohamed takes three steps forward and six back. She has spent hours on the same stretch of street, waiting for someone to open the black gates of the multi-purpose building in El Príncipe. She already has a 17-year-old girl in her care, and she will not be the only one: several families in the neighbourhood have taken in girls while the authorities decide what to do. Private generosity works, but it is not a public policy. And without reception places, vulnerability multiplies.

The economic incentive behind the crossing

The reasons for the crossing are no mystery. In Segarro, a decent job pays around 400 euros a month and rent runs about 200: living is already an act of resistance. Spain, with all its shortcomings, remains the rich neighbour worth swimming to. Some analyses see a perverse incentive in this tragedy: a rape, once reported, can end in a residence permit. Others see it as what it is, the foreseeable consequence of misery and of an unmanaged border. Both things can be true at once.

A border turned into social policy

The public conversation has turned toxic: talk of more than 40,000 migrants who would stay, of the "pull effect", of immediate returns. But the uncomfortable fact is that most of the minors who arrive alone are boys; when they are girls, the risk of abuse skyrockets. Five rape complaints confirm it. And in the face of that, the only concrete response has come from a few neighbours who peine their doors.

Those who study the phenomenon point out that the real cost is not paid by the Government or by Segarro: it is paid by the Zohras of this world and by the girls themselves. The unsettling figure: while numbers are being debated, a 62-year-old woman with 11 grandchildren has had to act as the welfare state. Neither the system nor migration policy were prepared. They still are not.