Luis Ayllón
The Council of Ministers yesterday appointed Carlos Ruiz Gonzalez, currently Deputy Director General for International Cooperation against Terrorism, Drugs and Organized Crime, as Ambassador-at-Large for the Fight against Trafficking in Human Beings.
The post of Ambassador-at-Large for the Fight against Trafficking in Human Beings is newly created and with it, the Government intends to reinforce the international cooperation of a scourge that is fought in an operative way from the Ministry of the Interior, through the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime.
Carlos Ruiz, who has been posted, among other places, in San Salvador, Algiers, Bucharest, Ankara, New York, Mexico City and Havana, has also been director of the Technical Cabinet of the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for Development (AECID) and advisor in the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.
The newly appointed Ambassador-at-Large will keep his post as Deputy Director General, from where he has been dealing with issues related to Human Trafficking, a problem that is becoming increasingly serious. In fact, after drug trafficking, the activity related to human trafficking is the one that provides more profits to criminals in the world, even ahead of arms trafficking.
Human trafficking includes practices such as sexual exploitation, forced labor, the sale of organs, begging or servitude. It is estimated that 50% of the victims of trafficking in the world can be included in sexual exploitation and the majority of those affected by this scourge (around 94%) are women and girls. Around 20% of people are subjected to forced labor.
The fact that a large part of the victims of human trafficking are women has led the Government to create the figure of the Ambassador-at-Large to combat it, considering it one more aspect of what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has defined as a “feminist diplomacy”.
On Monday and Tuesday of next week, according to The Diplomat, the department headed by Arancha González Laya will hold the first international seminar on the fight against Human Trafficking at the Palacio de Viana and through videoconferences, with the participation of representatives of different multilateral organizations, such as the OSCE, the United Nations or the Council of Europe.
The aim is to address issues that have an impact on the problem of human trafficking, such as new technologies or financial trafficking, among others.
