The Bulgarian government, which had been planning to legalize prostitution, abruptly reversed itself Friday, part of a broad trend in Europe to impose bans as a way to combat sex trafficking.
"We should be very definite in saying that selling flesh is a crime," Interior Minister Rumen Petkov said at a forum on human trafficking Friday. The president, the minister of justice and the U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria also attended.
Bulgaria is only the latest European country to shift its approach to prostitution. Finland last year made it illegal to buy sex from women brought in by traffickers, and Norway is on the verge of imposing an outright ban on purchasing sex.
Even in Amsterdam, Netherlands, the city government has proposed shutting down more than a quarter of the famed storefront brothels in the red-light district.
People are also reading…
And in the Czech Republic and the three Baltic republics, attempts at legalization similar to the Bulgarian one have been turned back.
Prostitution now exists in a legal gray area in Bulgaria, a small but important country for the European sex trade.
Women are sent abroad by the thousands each year to work as prostitutes, often against their will, and many others are forced into prostitution within the country's borders.
Opponents of legal prostitution argue that illegal operations flourish where paying for sex is permitted, and that human trafficking follows the demand.
The goal of prohibiting sex-for-money is to reduce the demand, and thus curtail trafficking if not stamp it out entirely.
"It has turned around," said Gunilla Ekberg, formerly a special adviser to the Swedish government on the subject and now a co-executive director of the nonprofit Coalition Against Trafficking in Women-International.
"There's a recognition, both politically and in civil society, that Bulgaria is not going to be a haven for prostitution."
The fight against legal prostitution has been led by an unusual coalition, including the Bush administration, feminist groups and the Swedish government.
Proponents of measures like the Swedish model, which punishes customers rather than the prostitutes, say it has succeeded in Europe precisely because it singles out those who pay for sex without criminalizing those who provide it.
The prostitutes, mostly women, are the real victims of the transactions, the proponents say.
While increasingly appealing, the Swedish model is hardly the only one. The Hungarian government announced last month that it would give permits to prostitutes to help bring them into the legal economy and collect taxes.
The most common arguments against the Swedish model are those long used in the legalization debate: Because prostitution is all but impossible to eradicate, it is better to keep it in the open, with some control.
Even if it is not a crime for the women, critics say, they still must hide to protect their clients.
"If they make prostitution illegal, it will go much more underground, more inaccessible for services and help, for police and for protection," said Nadia Kozhouharova, a psychotherapist who works with abused women, including victims of trafficking, through a Sofia group, the Animus Association.
Find all the world news published in the last week at azstarnet.com/allheadlines
"We should be very definite in saying that selling flesh is a crime."
Rumen Petkov
Bulgarian interior minister
$25M distribution center to be built in Tucson
