In Spain’s Ceuta, migrant women tell of sexual harassment: ‘it’s really bad’

Some women at a makeshift camp say they are afraid to sleep at night: ‘a lot of guys are trying to attack the girls every night’

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, were 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.