In Western European countries such as Germany, prostitution is legal?but only for European Union residents. The restrictions are intended to combat trafficking in women?whereby criminal networks smuggle women and girls from one country or region to the next, exploiting them as prostitutes or domestic laborers. Eastern and Central Europe have reportedly surpassed Asia as the prime source of this trafficking. In Germany, 80 per cent of the estimated 10,000 trafficked women are from this European region, according to the International Organization for Migration.
While these women may have chosen to migrate as prostitutes for economic reasons, few are prepared for the abuse frequently encountered. Not only are they driven further into debt, but some are deprived of their passports, raped, sold to clubs and pimps, while others face threats to their families at home if they don't comply. The laws barring these women from legally working as prostitutes were supposed to combat trafficking. Yet according to women's groups on both sides of the legalization debate, they have done more harm than good. They drive the women further underground as illegal aliens. In 1997, for example, German authorities reported finding 1,500 trafficked women?95 per cent of whom were deported. The act of accepting payment for sex and sometimes paying for sex is illegal and punished. This is the situation, for example, in the Gulf States and in most of the United States. The law forbids certain activities related to payment for sex rather than paid sex itself. These activities include soliciting for clients, advertising, living off the earnings of prostitutes, recruiting prostitutes or helping them to circulate from one country to another. This is the most common legal framework for commercial ...