On International Whoresday, Sex Workers to New Coalition: “Show us your data, and we’ll show you ours.”

Since the beginning of the evaluation of the law that governs our careers and bodies (ProstituiertenSchutzGesetz), sex workers have nervously awaited news of the new government’s intentions for us.

The wait ended in April.

The Koalitionsvertrag states:

“Germany has become a hub for human trafficking. Almost without exception, the victims are women.^[1]In light of the evaluation of the Prostitute Protection Act, we will make improvements as needed with the support of an independent commission of experts.” (lines 3276-9)

On International Whoresday, we have a few things we would like to point out.

We are deeply gratified that the coalition will wait for the data before making policy choices,rather than–as we feared–stating a flat-out intention for implementing the Nordic Model in Germany, as many of us had dreaded. It is also an excellent sign that “experts” will be contracted to interpret the data and draft any changes to the law deemed appropriate. We hope and assume that sex workers will be among those experts.

However: It’s time for a fact check.

Is Germany a “hub for human trafficking”?

From an international perspective, not at all. The data proving this are abundant and readily available.

The human horrors experienced by victims of human trafficking demand accuracy in conversations about redressing them. Sex workers take extreme exception to this topic being used as a political football.

Due to the fact that political conservatives often mistakenly conflate sex work and human sex trafficking, the first step is to establish the realdefinition of human trafficking according to the internationally recognized authority, the United Nations:

^[b]

Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/crime.html

So, how much human trafficking actually takes place in Germany?

First, an important caveat:

Paramour Collective was founded because of the level of exploitation that its members had already experienced in legalized sex work businesses in Germany. The government has spent much effort in regulating the bodies of the sex workers themselves, but very little ensuring that exploitation does not occur within a legal context. For example, it is standard in Berlin for brothels to take 40-50% of their workers’ earnings, in addition to a variety of other arbitrary fees. These fees often total more than 50% of a worker’s earnings, which meets the definition of human trafficking as defined by the Palermo Protocol.^[2]These victims are not tracked in any way. Therefore, we have no data regarding what percentage of workers in legal, registered businesses are actually human trafficking victims.

However, in terms of data we do have, the diagram below shows levels of human trafficking by region, according to the most recent publicly available data. It shows that numbers of victims of human trafficking identified in Central and South-Eastern Europe declined in 2022 as compared to 2019.

Data show that Covid-19 (or, more probably, lockdowns and consequential decrease in accessibility of victims to law enforcement officials) had an enormous negative impact on human trafficking victims. There is likely no way to measure percentages of victims who have gone undetected. So, while this table does not reflect every case of human trafficking to Europe, it does show us that human trafficking in Europe is, relatively speaking, less severe than other parts of the world.

What about within Europe? How does Germany measure up?

While the total number of human trafficking victims ending up in Germany may seem alarming, that changes when compared to Germany’s size.

Here is a breakdown of human trafficking victims as a percentage of the population:

This shows that Germany is actually 23rd in Europe in the number of registered victims as a percentage of its population.

Who is perpetrating human sex trafficking?

The news media and popular films have led to a misunderstanding regarding the real nature of human sex trafficking. Many people perceive this issue to be equivalent to so-called “white slavery,” in which underage, Caucasian European girls are stolen away to be prostituted against their will.

In reality, a majority of sex trafficking victims express a desire to emigrate in an economically depressed country of origin and are then exploited by people smugglers or traffickers, ending up in situations they could not have imagined.

The (documented) coerced sex trade is often one facet of an international criminal organization’s “business model.” Rather than individual kidnappers, sex trafficking is part of the broader scope of organized crime, as shown in the diagram below.

^[3]

In light of this, the next logical question is…

How is Germany doing in its fight against human trafficking?

The KOK reports that “Although a series of cases have come to light in the past few years, there is probably a substantial number of unreported cases. Authorities are also less aware of these issues and have less knowledge of what to look out for. … An urgent need for action [to] a large extent remains.”^[4]

Indeed, according to the Bundeskriminalpolizei’s “Organised Crime: National Situation Report 2023,”human trafficking is 10th on their list of the main components of organized crime they prosecuted in 2023, consisting of only 8 cases. (One could infer that there is room for improvement.) If the coalition plans to substantially cut funding to counselling centers and other organizations who work alongside law enforcement in service of human sex trafficking survivors, as those in the branch fear, the situation will become even worse.

How are most human trafficking victims found?

According to the UNDOC, the main mechanism for detecting and rescuing female victims of human trafficking is through action by law enforcement agencies (35%):

Other institutions, such as, presumably, Probea Berlin and other registration offices, detect only 9% of trafficking cases in female victims.

Therefore, it’s fair to ask if the regulation of sex workers is a useful tool in the fight to root out this type of exploitation.

Is regulating sex workers the best way to combat human trafficking?

Given the important role of law enforcement in detection, as well as the fact that the majority of human sex trafficking victims are women and girls (39 and 22%, respectively – the latter figure of which is chilling), the new government’s seeming focus on the regulation of sex workers as a venue for detection of human trafficking victims is absurd.

We expect the Kriminologisches Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen, the organization conducting the research study portion of the review of the Prostituiertenschutzgesetz, to supply us with data of human sex trafficking levels pre-ProsSchG and after.^[5]This is perhaps the most important data they could possibly gather. We eagerly await the release of their report in July.

In the meantime, we can look to other studies. According to a recent EU publication, “Trafficking in human beings is a complex criminal phenomenon. … The complexity of the trafficking phenomenon calls for a comprehensive response… [with] overarching legal, policy, and operational initiatives to combat human trafficking in a coherent and wide-ranging manner.”^[6]So blinders off, please. Focusing just on one strategy will not solve the problem.

A social worker at Probea Berlin who conducts screenings for human trafficking reported to a member of Paramour that the office does not keep a record of trafficking victims rescued by that office; nor could she say for certain whether or not any trafficking victims have been detected through the process of mandatory registration for sex workers.

Indeed, according to the KOK report, 68,01% of the exploitation of people attending their counselling centers (81% of which are victims of human trafficking) took place in the context of unregistered sexual services. Only 6,03% of these people were registered as sex workers with the government. This means that the registration system is coming into contact with only 32% of trafficking victims at most, and often not identifying them as such.

This stands to reason. Many sex workers register so that they can work in brothels, where they can be paid as little as 25 euros per client. No pimp or trafficker would expose themselves to the risk of registering their victims for such a small payout.

The “legalize and regulate sex workers” (but never their clients) policy originates in the Middle Ages. Not only that: It’s actually almost the same structure as the Nazis used to regulate sex workers, later using their registration lists to deport sex workers for being “asocial.”^[7]So we know that the policy tactic of over-regulating sex workers’ bodies is nothing short of a governmental fig leaf to reassure the public that “something is being done about human sex trafficking” (and, in subtext, immoral, overly promiscuous, loud, and otherwise inconvenient, nonconformist women).

We recommend that the new government focuses its attention on a law enforcement crackdown of the criminal gangs running both legal and illegal sex work and trafficking businesses in most German cities. A country in which a huge number of sex workers are under control of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang is a country which cannot realistically be said to have a “ProstituiertenSchutzGesetz.”^[8]claim to be protecting sex workers or human sex trafficking victims. Likewise a country in which most “rescued” victims of human sex trafficking have their human rights violated in the process.^[9]

Indeed, one can think of no other setting in which it would be tolerated to “protect” potential victims by regulating them. It is the equivalent of preventing rapes by illegallizing short skirts.

In order for a brand-new governing coalition to establish its credibility, it is best if its Koalitionsvertrag is factually accurate. Sex workers will not tolerate their right to self-determination in their careers (as guaranteed in the German Grundgesetz) to be infringed based on bad data. Indeed, we have endured such outrages for entirely too long.

[1]A sorry way to treat the 5% of human sex trafficking victims who are male or trans. See "Bundeslagebild Menschenhandel" (Federal Situation Report on Human Trafficking), latest editions (2021, 2022).

[2]An EU document aimed to combat human trafficking. https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/networks/european-migration-network-emn/emn-asylum-and-migration-glossary/glossary/palermo-protocol_en

[3]“Governance” and “business” refer to two different types of crime organizations (it has nothing to do with government).

[4]“2024 KOK Report: Data Collection in the Context of Trafficking in Human Beings and Exploitation in Germany,” https://www.kok-gegen-menschenhandel.de/fileadmin/user_upload/medien/Publikationen_KOK/KOK_Datenbericht_2024_e_Broschur_web_2.pdf

[5]However, such an evaluation should only take into account pre-Covid-19 data, as, heartbreakingly, the pandemic sharply increased global levels of human trafficking and decreased the detection of victims.

[6]“Communication From The Commission To The European Parliament, The Council, The European Economic And Social Committee And The Committee Of The Regions on the EU Strategy on Combatting Trafficking in Human Beings,” 2021- 2025.

[7]“With Legs Wide Open: A Whore’s Walk Through History”museum exhibition, Schwules Museum, April-November 2024.

[8]“Prostitute’s Protection Act.”

[9]“Persons affected by human trafficking and exploitation…have certain rights. However, many of these rights and benefits are contingent upon their residence status.” “2024 KOK Report: Data Collective in the Context of Trafficking in Human Beings and Exploitation in Germany,” German NGO Network against Trafficking in Human Beings (KOK). For a prime example, see Janjevik, Darko, “German Police Launch Prostitution Raids,” DW, 18.4.2018. https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-launch-crackdown-on-human-trafficking-organized-crime/a-43430180