We will be much more at risk, clients will try to take condoms off, we're more at risk of being exposed to HIV. It happened in France when they started this Nordic model.
In response to the petition, a justice ministry spokesman told the BBC that the government had plans to step up measures against human trafficking as well as provide funds to help sex workers trying to leave prostitution. The plans were going into consultation and would be put to parliament later this year, he said. But any drastic overturn of the Netherlands' current liberal laws will face opposition from those in politics and society who see prostitution as a symbol of freedom rather than repression.
Tough times for Amsterdam sex business. Image source, Getty Images. Amsterdam is well known for its De Wallen red light area, but campaigners say the prostitutes are exploited. View this post on Instagram. Prostitution and the law. Read Anna Holligan's report from Amsterdam's red light zone here.
What do campaigners say? France outlaws paying for sex. Image source, Exxpose. The KLPD report stressed that legalization had not ended abuse in the prostitution sector.
Monitoring and regulation were no guarantee that women do not work under threat of coercion. The KLPD report had two important effects. Firstly, it questioned the distinction between the licensed and non-licensed sector, one supposedly clean and the other criminal.
Secondly, it also overturned the distinction between the emancipated prostitute from the EU and the sorry victims from non-EU countries, as most of the trafficked women turned out to be EU citizens, notably from the Netherlands and Germany. The report received widespread publicity; later one of the KLPD team further fuelled public and parliamentary debate by publishing a book about his experiences in investigating forced prostitution Werson Another recent publication by two journalists, although extending its scope to forced labor in general, draws extensively on the KLPD reports and comes out in favour of better implementation of existing regulation as well as supporting the higher age of consent for prostitution and controlling the escort services Roessingh and Ramesar Although there is no recent public opinion poll on attitudes towards prostitution and its regulation, the recurring media attention to all the reports, books, articles, events and incidents have in all likelihood led to a shift in public opinion about the regulation of prostitution in the s.
TK —, , no. Brief Minister van Justitie , 21 February The legal age for defining minors in the Netherlands is 18, which is also the age of consent for sex work, while for sex in general it is 16 years. Brief Minister , 13 May , p. No evidence, however, was found for this claim.
Given the publicity and parliamentary pressure, prostitution returned to the cabinet agenda in , when the christian democrats, social democrats and christian unionists formed a new cabinet Balkenende IV and included the issue in their cabinet pact.
This opened the debate on revising the act. Interestingly, the new articles on human trafficking in the penal code of formulated to comply with the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons redefined forced prostitution as forced labor and no longer tie trafficking to the crossing of national borders.
The promised new bill was introduced in parliament in by the cabinet Balkenende IV TK —, , Wet regulering prostitutie en bestrijding misstanden sex branch e, 11 November To achieve this, it proposed a licensing regime of all forms of prostitution with uniform regulation across all communities but keeping the option of a local ban open and the registration of prostitutes.
Licensing is also to apply to the escort services. The bill also proposed to raise the age for sex work to 21 years. A more liberal regime to allow non-EU residents to work in the sex industry was opposed on the familiar grounds that it would make for more trafficking.
The registration of prostitutes, with penalties for failing to do so—an unprecedented shift in Dutch prostitution policy—and several measures to clarify the difference between self-employment and wage work, were included to enable sex workers to work independently. Finally, the bill proposed extra measures for exit options for those who want to leave prostitution.
Although both cabinets have made revisions of the text following committee debate, the major intentions were more or less unchanged by the time it was debated in plenary by the Second Chamber in spring There was consensus about the purposes of the bill among the parliamentary parties, none of which contested the dominant framing. The parties differed in their opinions about the act: the religious parties held it to be a failure, while the secular parties still supported the legalization and ascribed its shortcomings to failing law enforcement and loopholes in the original.
The major bone of contention during the debates was the registration of the sex workers which aimed at preventing forced prostitution by establishing a contact between local authority and sex worker to check whether she was doing the work out of free will.
All the secular parties objected to registration on the grounds of the right to privacy. Clients have to ask for the registration pass of their sex worker, otherwise they are also liable to prosecution. This leaves open the question how a client is then supposed to check whether the sex worker was registered or not; an issue which has been left to later regulation. The raising of the age of consent for sex work to 21 years was less controversial, although the left-wing parties and the Social Liberals had doubts about its effectiveness in curbing forced prostitution.
A, Gewijzigd voorstel van wet, 29 March The social rights of sex workers were only discussed at the last stage of the debates, during which the cabinet promised to take away the obstacles to their right to work. It also promised to extend exit programs for prostitutes, a favorite of the religious parties, but also supported by the social democrats.
Despite the reservations of the secular parties, only the Green Left party and the Social Liberals voted against the bill, so that it received a generous majority TK, —, 26 March Noteworthy is the shift in position of the Socialist and the Social Democrat party, who had both voted in favor of lifting the ban on brothels in , but now went along with the new framing.
The bill has received its first reading in the First Chamber, where most parties were highly critical, doubting whether the bill will actually achieve its aims and if the proposed registration does not contravene the right to privacy EK —, , D, Nader Voorlopig Verslag , 13 December The minister of justice still has to respond to the critique before it can be taken to the final vote. Complicating the issue is that the cabinet Rutte has only 37 of the 75 seats in the chamber, making it dependent on the opposition to pass the bill.
The First Chamber does not have the right to amend bills and must therefore either pass or fail the bill in its entirety. It remains to be seen whether the First Chamber, a house of review traditionally strong on constitutional rights and legal technical issues, will find enough justification to fail it.
The Netherlands legalized prostitution in as the old articles in the penal code, which forbade brothels and profiting from the gains of prostitution but did not criminalize the prostitute , no longer sufficed to control the globalizing sex industry in the last decades of the twentieth century. Local authority could not curb the excesses, as the courts struck down any attempt at regulation as contravening the penal code. The national association of the municipalities the VNG demanded the lift of the ban on brothels, so that local authority could regulate the sex industry, a demand picked up by parliament in the early s.
The new feminist movement developed the new framing of prostitution as work and the prostitute as a modern and emancipated sex worker. This proved compatible with the liberal discourse on the issue, favouring individual choice and treating the sex business as a normal business, and with the feminism of the Left.
In this way, it became the dominant discourse among the secular parties. When the Christian Democrats—opposed to legalizing prostitution—were ousted from power in , the secular Purple cabinets — seized the opportunity to legalize prostitution, with a view to regulating in a pragmatic way. Implementation of the new act was delegated to local authority, responsible for health and safety requirements, and sex workers became eligible for social rights as well as for paying taxes and social insurance.
However, consecutive evaluations of the new act in the s showed that the new system did not solve a number of serious problems in the sex industry. Although there was now a licensed sector where few minors or undocumented workers worked, there was considerable displacement to the footloose escort service branch and evidence that abuse of sex workers and human trafficking was still around. The Sneep case showed that even in the licensed sector forced prostitution occurred and that its victims were mainly Dutch and EU women and not the stereotypical poor girls from Eastern Europe.
Opponents of the legalization at first found willing ears in parliament among the religious parties. Window of opportunity was the coming to power of new cabinet Balkenende IV in , when all three coalition partners ascribed to a new framing of the issue as the trafficking of young women and the need to fight organized crime.
The fear of illegal migration played a role in revising the law but so did the continual publicity about forced prostitution and its victims. The new framing is compatible with the policy discourse of the current right wing government about law-and-order and migration, as signified by its adoption of the bill of the preceding cabinet. The proposed law, with its intricate system of licensing, registration of prostitutes and criminalization of the client if he uses the services of a non-registered sex worker, has been passed by the Second Chamber in It is uncertain if the First Chamber will accept the bill.
For the rights of sex workers, the legal changes do not augur well. The bill does little to remedy the lack of social rights, and the stigma of sex work remains intact, so that many sex workers prefer to remain anonymous.
The proposed registration of prostitutes and the new age barrier to work are new infringements of their civic and social rights. The right to work is 16 years in the Netherlands, and registration with the local state is an obligation which goes beyond the customary registration of businesses and professionals at the chamber of commerce for tax purposes. The registration is a real danger to their right to privacy, more so, as the Dutch state has a bad record in safeguarding the privacy rights of its citizens Kagie Undocumented workers remain open to blackmail because of their illegal status.
The new legislation will make it harder for them to find work, as the client will run a risk using their services. The cabinet will not extend humanitarian asylum status to trafficked women or grant work permits to non-EU prostitutes. The categories of sex workers created in will therefore stay intact, although the occupants of the categories have different nationalities and ethnicities than in the s, a consequence of the enlargement of the EU.
It has to be concluded that the state, by its slack implementation of the act and lack of attention to social rights in the proposed bill, is responsible for creating the bad working conditions, intimidation and blackmail itself. Altink, S. Een vergeten groep of Thaise vrouwen in erotische salons in Nederland. Amsterdam: De Rode Draad. Google Scholar. Rechten van prostituees. Evaluatie Opheffing Bordeelverbod. De sociale positie van prostituees. Asante, A. Het onzichtbare zichtbaar gemaakt.
Prostitutie in Amsterdam. Amsterdam Nota Partij van de Arbeid. Asscher, L. De Ontsluierde Stad. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker. Biesma, S. Verboden bordelen. Evaualtie Opheffing bordeelverbod niet-legale prostitutie. Groningen: Intraval.
Bovenkerk, F. Loverboys of modern pooierschap. Amsterdam: Augustus. Brants, C. The fine art of regulated tolerance: prostitution in Amsterdam. Journal of Law and Society, 25 , — Article Google Scholar. Daalder, A. Het bordeelverbod opgeheven: prostitutie in Prostitutie in Nederland na opheffing van het bordeelverbod. Onderzoek en Beleid, nr. De opheffing van het bordeelverbod. Gevolgen voor mensenhandel? Dekker, H. Amsterdam: Regioplan. Goderie, M. Illegaliteit, onvrijwilligheid en minderjarigheid in de prostitutie een jaar na de opheffing van het bordeelverbod.
Utrecht: Verwey-Jonker Instituut. Hopkins, R. Ik laat je nooit meer los. Het meisje, de vrouw, de handelaar en de agent. De Geus: Breda. Janssen, M. Reizende Sekswerkers. Latijns-Amerikaanse vrouwen in de Europese prostitutie. Kagie, R. Hoe Nederland verandert in een controlestaat. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Contact.
KLPD Schone schijn. Eerste rapportage van de Nationaal Rapporteur. Vijfde rapportage van de Nationaal Rapporteur. Tien jaar NRM. Mosterd, M. Echte mannen eten geen kaas. Amsterdam: Van Gennep. Outshoorn, J. Debating prostitution in parliament. A feminist analysis. Outshoorn Ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter Google Scholar. Pragmatism in the Polder: changing prostitution policy in the Netherlands. All of this begs the question: What is the incentive to work legally? Sex workers are required to have a license under the Amsterdam Municipal Ordinance and register with the Chamber of Commerce to pay taxes and pay for health insurance, like any other independent worker.
Yet despite being part of the legal labor market, sex workers do not receive many business services and social security measures that are typically granted to other entrepreneurs such as business bank accounts, sickness or occupational disability benefits , unemployment benefits , and pensions.
This year, Amsterdam city councilors will be provided an opportunity to keep one bad policy from supplanting another, to finally recognize sex work as a form of self-employment like any other, and to treat it as such.
Twitter: GenevaAbdul. The former Dutch colony in the Carribean is a member of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Shusha was the key to the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Now Baku wants to turn the fabled fortress town into a resort. The famously permissive Dutch city is cracking down on prostitution, relocating sex workers, and discriminating against those employed in the industry. By Geneva Abdul. A prostitute waits for clients behind her window in the red light district of Amsterdam on Dec. February 19, , PM. Argument Thijs Kleinpaste. Argument Lizan Nijkrake.
The Cable Kavitha Surana. What in the World?
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