Project CAIM is a pilot initiative in the area of prostitution and women trafficking in Portugal. The traffic of human beings is a multifaceted phenomenon that is, simultaneously, a criminal problem and a serious breaking of the Human Rights. It requires to be confronted by a partnership that associates the components of the investigation, combat and control of this crime with organizations working in the support and protection of the victims. From this point of view, the Portuguese Commission for Equality and Women Rights (in partnership with several organizations) submitted a candidacy to the European EQUAL initiative to develop the Project CAIM. Its main objective is the protection of the victims by: - Developing and implementing standards and tools to monitor the phenomenon of trafficking in order to act upon it - Strengthening the social interventions aimed at the protection and assistance of trafficked women. - Improving social inclusion and access to the labour market of the victims. - Promoting cooperation between national and international agents of intervention - Conceiving and proposing new legislation

- Victims of women trafficking (Support, protection and social integration) - Agents of security services and social intervention, and researchers - Intercultural mediators - Society

Project CAIM started from a pre-diagnosis that identified gaps and difficulties in the knowledge and intervention of the women trafficking for sexual exploitation. In this context, the project has tried to constitute a space of meeting for different actors to study and acquire new practical of intervention on this phenomenon. In this sense, CAIM has pretended to create a net of public and private institutions responsible for the prevention and combat of this crime, and the social integration of the victims. It has also promoted the cooperation with the victims’ countries of origin, the scientific research on the women trafficking phenomenon and the professional qualification of people that work on this issue.

Products to be developed: - Monitor system about women trafficking - Database of institutions and services that support victims of women trafficking - Compilation national and international legislation, projects and action plans about human beings trafficking and sexual exploitation - Guide to support formation of intervention agents - Guide to support social actions oriented to education and training for victims of women trafficking - Campaigns to prevent and raise awareness about women trafficking In 2008, in the context of Project CAIM and the Portuguese National Plan Against Human Beings Trafficking, it was created the Observatory of Human Trafficking. Its mission is to collect, process and disseminate information and knowledge related with this issue and other forms of gender violence.

CAIM has had three phases of action: Project development (2004-2005), Implementation (2005-2007) and Spreading (2008-2009).

After the first stage, the project partners identified some weak points in the diagnosis of necessities that had become possible threats to CAIM. Fo example, difficulties to contact face to face with women trafficked for security reasons, episodes of instability of some institutional partners, the repressive context of the intervention in the field of women trafficking, some delays in bureaucratic circuits and difficulties to mobilize to professionals of social communication.

EQUAL project