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Passed earlier this month, the law allows sex workers to obtain employment contracts from their pimps. These contracts classify prostitutes as hospitality employees and entitle them to health insurance, pensions, unemployment benefits, holidays and maternity leave.
Pimps must be licensed by the government to issue employment contracts, and must allow prostitutes to refuse or to stop sex with clients for any reason. However, if a prostitute refuses or stops sex more than ten times over six months, their pimp can open a labor dispute and involve a government mediator.
Belgium decriminalized sex work in 2022, allowing prostitutes to work as freelancers. However, employing a sex worker under contract remained a criminal offense, meaning that agreements between pimps and prostitutes existed in a legal gray area and contained no legally-binding protections for the prostitute.
UTSOPI, a trade union for sex workers in Belgium, hailed the new law. "Without a labor law, sex workers would still be legally discriminated against," UTSOPI spokesman Daan Bauwens said in a statement. "That is now over."
"We hope that other countries will copy this text, as they did on topics such as same-sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia and transgender rights," Bauwens added.
However, anti-exploitation activist Andrea Heinz argued that the new model simply allows pimps to "become 'managers' with the backing of the state to further entrench and maintain their power."
"Pimps see women they sell as products, not people deserving of full dignity and respect," Heinz wrote on X (formerly Twitter). "And 'government mediator'...Wtf is that? Someone to mediate pimp-victim 'contracts', ie. gently encourage women to get back in the brothel bed when they are 'not fulfilling their [sexual] obligations?'"
According to official estimates from 2022, there are around 3,000 sex workers active in Belgium. However, some studies put that number at ten times higher. The Belgian Federal Police claimed in 2015 that around 26,000 women were working as prostitutes, and that 80% of them were being exploited by trafficking gangs from Bulgaria, Romania, Spain, Portugal, Hungary and Nigeria, among other countries.
Reader Comments
Morally bankrupt spring La to mind.
The moral corruption is unbelievable!
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I spent 6 weeks in Aruba a few years back and prostitution is legal. Most of the girls were from Venezuela & Columbia. I was living in the south part of the island o a dog sitting gig and the area that all the prostitutes hung out. Plus the great restaurants. All the tourism is in the north. I use to drive the Jamaican housekeeper to this area once a week as she wired money home to relatives. The line was long at the Western Union sort of place as the prostitutes were all wiring their money home to their families.
Giggle: So, one day I'm parked across the street from the wiring joint waiting. I brought a book to read. Yet watching the American & Western 'Johns' trolling the streets was too much fun to watch. This particular day, a hooker was trying to get rid of her last John and he was like a boomerang and she couldn't shake him. She's wearing a robe and he's wearing a t-shirt & shorts. Here he is at the door taking selfies and kissing her good bye, then he'd walk 10 feet come back, then more hugging & kissing, then another selfie.
I almost got out of the car and clapped at the performance. What a chump, he either just lost his cherry or actually believed this gal was madly in love with him. Finally he strolled to his car like a cock pheasant all puffed up and so proud of himself. The gal finally locked the meatl gate on her door and went upstairs.
In Aruba the license last 3 months and then gets renewed, they get monthly health inspections and if a John doesn't pay them they can legally call the police and have the guy arrested.
Remember those old westerns were the ol'cow poke would bring his son to the bar & brothel and Miss Kitty would make sure a gentle woman got the young boy and took him upstairs to be educated into the world of carnal knowledge. While the Father drank whiskey downstairs.