Sexual Violence Safety Protocol for Leisure and Public Spaces and Transport

Good Practice

Sustainability

Sexual Violence Safety Protocol for Leisure and Public Spaces and Transport

Framework for coordinated prevention, detection, and responses to sexual violence in leisure and public spaces and transport, particularly incidents not covered by the penal code.

Catalan Government

Spain

Local policy

POLICY OBJECTIVE

Provide managers of private nightlife establishments, nightlife personnel, organizers of public nighttime leisure activities, and public transport workers with actions to prevent and respond to potential sexual violence.
Offer security professionals, including access controllers, security guards, and Catalonia police, detailed description of actions and roles.
Send a message of utmost respect for individuals’ sexual freedom and integrity by supplying criteria for interpreting behaviours that constitute sexual harassment. These forms of violence constitute non-criminal offences and occur frequently, so they are more challenging to identify.
Give instructions for assisting affected people.
Detail response to perpetrators of acts of sexual violence.
Coordinate actors in public and private security and other entities with impact on leisure, transport and public space.
Provide protocol implementors with guidelines for training police officers, port police, municipal security guards, security guards, access control employing, venue and event personnel, municipal technicians organizing massively attended events, and all individuals who can directly or indirectly prevent or respond to sexual violence. (Training constitutes a key pillar of the protocol, since it can mean preventing sexual violence and improving responses when such violence has unfortunately already occurred.)

CONTEXT

Article 15.2 of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia establishes individuals’ universal right to live with dignity, safety, and autonomy, and free from exploitation, mistreatment, and all forms of discrimination, as well as the right to freely develop one’s personality and personal capacity. Often, in practice, achievement of this proclamation is partial, as women are targetted by gender-based violence (GBV) and, more specifically, sexual violence, which permeates all areas and layers of society.

Advanced, modern societies must guarantee equal access to leisure time, and must never allow acts of sexual violence to occur within their confines. Achieving this requires allocating maximum efforts to prevent, pursue, and respond to acts of sexual violence with rigour. The Catalan Ministry of Interior, the authority responsible for matters affecting the safety of the people of Catalonia, has observed an increase in sexual violence from two very relevant sources in the field of public safety: police statistics and data from the 2021 Catalonia Gender-Based Violence Survey.

At least two conclusions can be drawn from these:

First, more sexual violence-related offences are coming to the attention of police. This increase is perhaps due in part to public awareness campaigns by public authorities and public and private entities, but incidents related to sexual violence are on the rise.
Second, the relatively few incidents reported to the police do not accurately represent the reality, as under-reporting in this area is higher than in other areas of GBV.

POLICY DESCRIPTION

All of Catalonia falls within the scope of the Protocol. It is mandatory for the Catalan Police (Mossos d’Esquadra). Local police, security professionals, and personnel at adhering organizations sign it when hired.

The Protocol applies to all private and public venues, individuals, and organizations that adhere as outlined on the Department of Interior website. Adherents undertake to comply with applicable Protocol content, principles, measures, and procedures and to provide entity staff and service providers with instructions necessary to comply. Adhering entities also commit to training staff in Protocol procedures and, more generally, in sexual violence and GBV.

The Catalan Ministry of Interior develops and promotes the training in coordination and collaboration with relevant organizations, particularly Catalonia’s Institute of Public Safety. The Catalan Ministry of Interior takes communication actions to publicize the Protocol among individuals who frequent leisure spaces and use public transport.

Adhering entities must disseminate the Protocol and materials to prevent sexual violence. The Catalan Ministry of Interior may supply some of these materials, or templates to develop them, but venues can also use other materials suitable for this purpose and for appropriate communication and dissemination channels. Communications must maintain a minimum of elements linking to the Protocol.

KEY ASPECTS

The policy is cross-cutting, so achieving consensus around principles, concepts, actions, and commitments means first working with the stakeholders who will execute it. This collaboration enables comprehensive action and responses. The policy’s most innovative aspects:

Establishes actions to protect and support victims and bring to light cases of criminal and non-criminal sexual violence that are currently underreported and, consequently, inadequately pursued.
Provides a diverse range of professionals who must act in coordination based on the same basic principles with guidelines to detect, prevent, and intervene in cases of violence.
Provides interpretive criteria for situations of non-criminal sexual harassment which, in the past, were pursued infrequently and with little to no impact on perpetrators.

RESULTS

To date 115 organizations have adhered to the Protocol. 79 of these are public (mostly municipalities) and 36 are private companies (18 are security companies, and the remainder, event organizers and auxiliary service providers). Roughly 3,400 people have been trained with Protocol content.

A revised version of the document, currently in development, will incorporate regulatory updates and an expanded scope (transport and public spaces were not explicitly included in the first version). To reach more entities, it will also make training processes and adhering to the Protocol easier.

Policy's Website

Martí

Navarro Regàs

Programme Manager at the Catalan Ministry of Interior

martinavarro@gencat.cat

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