Can the Nordic model become a European model in the fight against human trafficking?
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Human trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of people through force, fraud, coercion or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit.
In September 2023, the European Parliament voted to support a resolution that defines prostitution as a form of violence, and both a cause and a consequence of the persisting inequality between women and men. This has been interpreted as the EU encouraging the implementation of the “Nordic model” of prostitution in Member States in a wider effort to combat human trafficking. The Nordic model is quite divisive, with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and some worker associations strongly opposing it.
What is the Nordic model?
First implemented in Sweden in 1999, the Nordic model of prostitution is an approach under which the phenomenon is considered a public illness and a by-product of gender inequality. Under the Nordic model, prostitution is decriminalized while the purchase of sex is criminalized. In this way, this process attempts to eliminate unfair practices by reducing demand for it.
Why is it contested? The main criticisms of the Nordic model are that it discourages victims of human trafficking from reaching out to the authorities, endangers workers, breaches women’s right to bodily autonomy, and creates an underground economy.
What are the alternatives?
There are many different approaches to the legality of human trafficking within the European Union. In the Netherlands, for example, prostitution is completely legal and regulated, while in Italy it is legal and unregulated, and in Romania it is an illegal activity.
However, most human right organizations and associations which oppose the Nordic model, advocate for the full decriminalization of the selling and purchase of intercourses (“We have chosen to advocate for the decriminalization of all aspects of consensual adult sex” – Amnesty International).
What does the data say?
The discussion around the legalization of prostitution is heavily politicized, and data on human trafficking is scarce.
Nevertheless, we can present data on the evolution of the number of victims of human trafficking in the Netherlands in the graph below. The country has fully legalized prostitution in 2000, and both the purchase and selling of physical relations are fully decriminalized.
From the graph, it appears that the number of victims of trafficking has increased since the legalization of prostitution. However, one should take note of the fact that it is possible that the apparent rise in the number of victims of human trafficking may be a result of an increase in reports of human trafficking.
For a better understanding, we should perhaps contrast this graph with data on prostitution from Sweden. According to the Swedish government, the introduction of the law that criminalized human trafficking resulted in the decrease of the phenomenon. In the years immediately following the law, the number of women in streets declined by 30-50 percent, and the number of buyers declined by 75-80 percent.
Can the Nordic model become a European model in the fight against human trafficking?
The data available seem to support that the full legalization of prostitution leads to an increase in human trafficking victims, and that the Swedish or Nordic model is successful at discouraging its purchase.
However, the data is widely inconclusive since it can not be reliably said that the increase in the victims of human trafficking is real and not merely an increase in reports and there is not enough data about other -- probabiliy hidden -- parameters. In conclusion, prostitution as well as human trafficking remain hard to track and to a large degree invisible to the government. As such, the question will for now remain unanswered.
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Mancarella , F. (2021) Human rights-based approach to sex trafficking of women and girls: the analysis of prostitution policies in Italy, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Available at: https://repository.gchumanrights.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/9ba01345-8677-42da-88b0-94a1359ebe40/content (Accessed: 13 April 2024).
Mancarella , F. (2021) Human rights-based approach to sex trafficking of women and girls: the analysis of prostitution policies in Italy, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Available at: https://repository.gchumanrights.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/9ba01345-8677-42da-88b0-94a1359ebe40/content (Accessed: 13 April 2024).
