On March 25th and 30th, 2021, a set of focus group online were organized by the SeRV project portuguese team. These focus group were dedicated to the subject of Trafficking of Human Beings and the Protection and Intervention with the victims.

These moments of discussion were very important opportunities to share knowledge about the subject, and to think about the best practices conducted in Portugal, as well the major weaknesses of the National System, and sugestions about future steps to take to improve the protection and intervention with these victims. As participants, we welcomed many profesisonals from different organizations such as Family Planning Association (APF), Saúde em Português, Portuguese Association for Victim Support (APAV), Akto, Plano i Association (APi), Criminal Police (PJ), University of Minho (UM), OIKOS - Cooperação e Desenvolvimento, Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality (CIG), Observatory on Trafficking in Human Beings (OTSH), International Organization for Migration (IOM). We also welcomed the vice president of CIG and National Rapporteur for Human Trafficking, Dr. Manuel Albano.

The SeRV project – “Services and Rights for Victims of Crime” is funded by the European Commission (JUST-AG-2018/JUST-JACC-AG-2018/847356), involves six countries of EU (Portugal, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Romania and Spain), and aims to improve understanding of victims’ support services (VSS) provision, challenges and opportunities; promote networking and referral agreements with entities and increase stakeholder awareness about the best VSS provision and interorganizational cooperation; and facilitate transnational exchange between VSS to support knowledge exchange and cooperation.

In Portugal, the project is coordinated by FEP-UCP lecturers and researchers Catarina Ribeiro and Mariana Barbosa. The national team also includes the lecturer, researcher and Dean of FEP-UCP, Raquel Matos, and the researcher Mafalda Santos.

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