II SÉRIE-D — NÚMERO 7

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2) We need all countries to allocate more resources for anti-trafficking, irrespective of which legal approach

they follow as concerns prostitution. Whether its legalising or criminalising any or all aspects of prostitution,

they should always make sure that they have enough human and financial resources to counter this scourge.

They need to have enough staff and this staff have to be adequately trained.

These are some the main points that I meant to raise, but I would like to add some more considerations.

“Some say that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. That is incorrect. It still exists, but now it

weighs only on women, and it is called prostitution!”

“Prostitution”, he said, “is about society buying a slave. From whom? From misery! Again Victor Hugo

words: “A soul for a piece of bread. Misery makes the offer; society accepts!”

These words, written a long time ago, are still true. They apply to the vast majority of people in prostitution

today.

We also often say that trafficking is a modern form of slavery.

And, if on one hand demand must be discouraged, on the other side of the roots problem, we find extreme

poverty, and what I call the Devil’s Troika, that joins Migration to Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation.

Not by chance, all available statistics point out the fact that more than 2/3 of the victims of trafficking are

bound for sexual exploitation and forced prostitution, and more than 2/3 of these victims are women and girls.

Although distinct phenomena, there is a clear and strong link between prostitution and trafficking.

Legalizing prostitution was not a successful solution, as criminal organizations never were so prosperous

and the protection and status of prostitutes did not improved as expected at the time of the laws adoption.

But it must also be said, that criminalizing the sale of sexual services was a regretful exercise of

mystification and hypocrisy.

As I said before, we need more figures, more data base collection. But we have some estimations, what I

call approaches from reality. For instance, every year, between 70.000 and 140.000 people are trafficked in

Europe. 84% of them, are trafficked into forced prostitution.

Last week, in Paris, I heard in a conference about this subject, that 90% of prostitutes are foreigners,

coming from Bulgaria, Romania, Nigeria, Cameroun or China. 85% of prostitutes are women, and 90% of the

buyers are men.

Back four years ago, inquiries conducted on the context of a UK Campaign against trafficking and forced

prostitution, it was learnt that 68% of prostitutes suffer from strees post-traumatic, 95% of them are addicted to

drugs, the rate of mortality amongst them is twelve times more than the average rate and that 9 in every ten

women would like to quit prostitution.

Some people say prostitution is sex work. I don’t think this designation should be used. Neither is work, see

ILO’s definition of work, neither is sex, but violence against the most vulnerable people, exploited by pimps and

international maffiosi networks. We are talking about migrants, women as majority, frequently minors.

In Germany, the police department responsible for fighting agains “crime related to nightlife” have been

warning about the development of criminal organizations, growing like mushrooms, on the control of the

trafficking/prostitution business, such as:

“Albanian clans”

“Balcan syndicates”

“Ukrainian gangs”

“Lebanese mafia”

“Turkish criminal groups”

“Lithuanian criminal groups”

“Bulgarian pimp gangs”

“Male or female Nigerian pimps”

“Hell Angels, the rocker gangs”