Good practices in the attention, prevention and prosecution of human trafficking

Abstract

The human trafficking and smuggling of people has been recognize as a severe violation of human rights and a matter of social justice. This manifestation of violence has reach a significant magnitude in Costa Rica, being traversed by a gender directionality, which implies that it affects mainly women because of their gender condition. This paper gathers the most relevant results of an investigation about the institutional response towards prevention, attention and prosecution of human trafficking and smuggling in the period of time from 2017-2018 in the “Centro de Investigaciones en Estudios de la Mujer”. The study was a qualitative-descriptive type, and it is based on the perspective of workers of state institutions involved in the approach of this problem. Its main objective was the identification of good practices and remaining challenges in the fight of human smuggling. The results of the study demonstrate that beside the progress in the matter, the particular dynamic of human smuggling includes a series of complexities towards it approach. Although, good practices are identified referring to the detection and specialized intervention of human victims, elements such as the primary intervention, the access to justice, the monitoring and evaluation of the institutional actions, persist among the main challenges. The pretention is that this investigation sum to the contributions toward the production of critical knowledge and committed with the full exercise of women right to live free of violence.