Sex workers protest as French lawmakers outlaw paying for acts

French lawmakers have passed a law that
makes it illegal to pay for sex and imposes
fines of up to €3,750 (£3,027, $4,274) for
those buying sexual acts.
Those convicted would also have to attend
classes to learn about the conditions faced by
prostitutes. It has taken more than two years
to pass the controversial legislation because
of differences between the two houses of
parliament over the issue.
BBC reported that some sex workers
protested against the law during the final
debate. The demonstrators outside
parliament in Paris, numbering about 60,
carried banners and placards one of which
read: “Don’t liberate me, I’ll take care of
myself”.
The law was passed in the final vote on the
bill in the lower house of parliament by 64 to
12 with 11 abstentions. It supersedes
legislation from 2003 that penalised sex
workers for soliciting. Prostitution itself is not
a crime in France, but pimping, human
trafficking, brothels and and buying sex from
a minor are all already against the law.
Members of the Strass sex workers’ union
said the law will affect the livelihoods of
France’s sex workers, estimated to number
between 30,000 and 40,000. Sweden was the
first country to criminalise those who pay for
sex rather than the prostitutes, introducing the
law in 1999. Other countries have since
adopted the so-called “Nordic model”:
Norway in 2008, Iceland in 2009, and Northern
Ireland in 2014. Earlier this year, the European
parliament approved a resolution calling for
the law to be adopted throughout the
continent.
But many advocacy groups warn the model
makes sex work more dangerous. Catherine
Stephens, an activist with the United
Kingdom-based International Union of Sex
Workers, and a sex worker herself, said
criminalisation makes those in the industry
“much more likely to have to accept clients
who are obscuring their identity, which
benefits people who want to perpetrate
violence”.
Ms Stephens told the BBC that criminalising
those who wish to purchase sex makes them
less likely to report concerns about a sex
worker’s wellbeing. “We have had cases
where clients have helped people escape from
situations of coercion … Criminalising the
client actively works against that,
discouraging them from coming forward. We
need to create a situation in which it is easy
to report harm, violence and coercion. Blanket
criminalisation of premises, brothels, or
clients absolutely works against that.”
Amnesty International said that laws against
buying sex “mean that sex workers have to
take more risks to protect buyers from
detection by the police”. The charity said sex
workers have reported being asked to visit
customers’ homes to help them avoid police,
instead of meeting them in safer
environments.
Supporters of the law argue that it increases
safety. Anne-Cecile Mailfert, the president of
the Women’s Foundation in France, which
provides support to women’s rights
organisations, says sex workers are better
able to seek police protection if they need it.
She told the BBC: “We are giving to the
prostituted person a new tool to defend
themselves and protect themselves. If they
don’t want to do that then actually they just
don’t have to call the police. But if anything
happens, if the client is violent, if anything
wrong happens, then now they have the law
on their side.”
The legislation will also make it easier for
foreign prostitutes to get a temporary
residence permit in France if they agree to
find jobs outside prostitution, says Socialist
MP Maud Olivier, who sponsored the
legislation.
He told the Associated Press: “The most
important aspect of this law is to accompany
prostitutes and give them identity papers,
because we know that 85% of prostitutes here
are victims of trafficking.”