The Dominican Embassy in Spain has secured an agreement with the government of Spain to combat trafficking and violence against women in Spain. The agreement has provisions to back entrepreneurship in migrant women. The agreement covers Dominican women in Spain and Spanish women in the Dominican Republic.
The agreement provides for the coordination of access to services for migrant women in situations of violence and, in the case of victims of trafficking, for the voluntary and safe return of those who decide to return to their country of origin.
The agreement signed on 27 June 2023 between Spain and the Dominican Republic seeks to promote gender equality, guarantee women’s human rights and provide support and protection to migrants and victims of trafficking.
The Spanish Minister of Equality, Irene Montero and the Minister of Women’s Affairs of the Dominican Republic, Mayra Jiménez, signed the agreement.
“Women represent 58.69% of the total migrant population of the Dominican Republic in Spain, which is the country with the second largest number of Dominicans… and Spanish immigration ranks third among the countries with the largest migratory flow to the Dominican Republic,” said Dominican Minister of Women Mayra Jimenez, who signed the agreement for the Dominican Republic.
Jimenez acknowledged that migration impedes access to services, which is why the Ministry is promoting efforts to ensure that Dominican women abroad have access to comprehensive care services, especially in cases of gender violence.
Jimenez stressed: “That is why having the Ministry of Equality of Spain as we have had in these years, as an ally in these efforts, is a great step for us from the Dominican Republic and, above all, in the Ministry of Women we are convinced, Minister (Irene), that gender equality is an issue of rights as you have promoted with so much strength in this country, with so much commitment and that it is also an engine for sustainable development and above all for the quality of democracy in our states.”
Meanwhile, Spain’s Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, stressed that the memorandum of understanding places women’s human rights and fundamental issues on the international feminist agenda at the center, such as care and care societies, education and awareness of equality, sexual and reproductive health, women’s economic, social and political autonomy, and the right to live free from all forms of violence against women.
She admitted that migrant women require greater gender protection. “I would not want to forget that Spain, as a country where many Dominican women live, work and study, has a special responsibility towards them for their protection in terms of gender violence and for the full enjoyment of all their rights as women on an equal footing and I recognize this because we are aware that much remains to be done so that all migrant women are guaranteed all their rights in Spain.”
Likewise, she referred that the commitment contemplates the coordination in matters of prevention and attention to the Spanish women residing in the Dominican Republic who are victims of male violence.
“I do not forget, likewise, that this memorandum includes the promotion and recognition of Afro-descendant women, an issue that in the Spanish case, although we still have much to do, we have taken with special care and dedication because we do not understand any other way of exercising feminism and human rights than hand in hand with anti-racism and the eradication of all forms of discrimination, including those affecting the LGBTI community,” Montero pointed out.
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Listin Diario
29 June 2023