需求是人口贩运的根本原因–性贩运和卖淫

• 1. 马耳他主权教团监测和打击人口贩运大使米歇尔-沃特希教授的开幕词
• 2. Sr. Mir­jam Beike, RGS, 主持人
• 3. 奴隶自由贸易组织创始人布莱恩-伊瑟林关于需求作用的介绍
• 4. 桑德拉-诺拉克，以 “情人男孩 “的方式将妇女引入卖淫业的幸存者
• 5. SOL­WODI的创始人Lea Ackermann女士，该协会是一个帮助处于紧急情况下的妇女的国际协会。
• 6. 英格-贝尔，德国人权活动家、企业家、妇女权利组织 “地球妇女 “和援助组织 “索尔沃迪 “巴伐利亚分部的副主席

TEXT OF THE APRIL 13 WEBINAR:

DEMAND AS ROOT CAUSE FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING — SEX TRAFFICKING & PROSTITUTION

MICHEL VEUTHEY: wel­come to the first of three webi­na­rs on demand as root cause for human traf­fick­ing. Today, we shall dis­cuss sex traf­fick­ing and pros­ti­tu­tion. On behalf of the Order of Mal­ta, I would like to thank Sr. Mir­jam Beike for her active par­tic­i­pa­tion in the organ­i­sa­tion of these webi­na­rs, as well as Bri­an Iselin. Bri­an is at the ori­gin of the empha­sis we shall now put on the demand side of human traf­fick­ing. He is the co-organ­is­er of these three webi­na­rs. As we have seen in our pre­vi­ous webi­na­rs, crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion is need­ed, but not suf­fi­cient. To date, few Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tions and mea­sures have addressed demand. Under­stand­ing and address­ing demand is the way for­ward to pre­vent and com­bat human traf­fick­ing. This is why we wel­come the Nordic or Swedish Mod­el of pros­ti­tu­tion that will be dis­cussed dur­ing this sem­i­nar. Human traf­fick­ing is a heavy, com­plex phe­nom­e­non, that requires broad coop­er­a­tion between Gov­ern­ments and civ­il soci­ety, includ­ing reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions. We all need to address the root cause, the main root cause, which is a cul­ture of striv­ing for max­i­mum prof­it, on the part of pro­duc­ers and con­sumers, a cul­ture that under­mines and even denies the dig­ni­ty of the human being, the fam­i­ly, work and the envi­ron­ment. In today’s throw­away cul­ture, women, men, chil­dren are seen as a com­mod­i­ty that can be freely exploit­ed, dis­posed of, an object for sale. Today, we are very for­tu­nate to wel­come dis­tin­guished speak­ers. First, Sr Mir­jam Beike, Gene­va Rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the UN in Gene­va of the Sis­ters of Our Lady of Char­i­ty of the Good Shep­herd. She worked 30 years with sur­vivors of traf­fick­ing in Ger­many and Alba­nia. She is a work­ing board mem­ber of RENATE, Reli­gious in Europe Net­work­ing Against Traf­fick­ing and Exploita­tion, and of the Alliance of NGOs on Crime Pre­ven­tion and Crim­i­nal Jus­tice. Sec­ond speak­er is Bri­an Iselin, for­mer Aus­tralian sol­dier and fed­er­al agent, founder of the NGO slave­free­trade, work­ing on elim­i­nat­ing mod­ern slav­ery on the work­place. Mrs. San­dra Norak, sur­vivor of Lover Boy method, now works to raise aware­ness about the harms of pros­ti­tu­tion. She’s active in a Ger­man Asso­ci­a­tion called SISTERS that helps women in pros­ti­tu­tion and assists them in leav­ing pros­ti­tu­tion. Mrs. Inge Bell, Ger­man human rights activist, entre­pre­neur and sec­ond chair­per­son of the women’s rights organ­i­sa­tion Terre des Femmes, and the Bavar­i­an branch of the aid organ­i­sa­tion, SOLWODI, which means Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Women in Dis­tress. We are very grate­ful that Sr. Lea Ack­er­mann, founder of SOLWODI, might join us lat­er dur­ing the dis­cus­sion. And now, I have the great plea­sure to give the floor to our first speak­er and mod­er­a­tor, Sr. Mir­jam Beike. Mir­jam, you have the floor.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you, Michel. You have already pre­sent­ed our speak­ers. So now I see that the first speak­er that we planned has dis­ap­peared, but he will come back. It will be tech­ni­cal prob­lems. Hi, Bri­an. So Bri­an was already intro­duced by you, and we want first to go deep­er and give an intro­duc­tion on the role of demand, because to under­stand this is very impor­tant for us. So please, Bri­an, you have the floor.

BRIAN ISELIN: Great. Thanks so much, Sr. Mir­jam. Thanks so much for the invi­ta­tion again, Michel, to be here. And I’m guess­ing at this point some par­tic­i­pants are going, “Oh no, not this guy again.”  Yes, sor­ry. I will try to be quick and I’ll also, thanks, Michel, for the tip, be slow­er than usu­al. I’ve been work­ing on traf­fick­ing for near­ly two decades, and before that I was work­ing in glob­al coun­ternar­cotics. The major­i­ty of the time work­ing on traf­fick­ing, I’ve been work­ing on sex­u­al exploita­tion. And through­out those 20 years, every day, there’s not a sin­gle day I haven’t been dis­ap­point­ed with the evi­dence of a glob­al scarci­ty of some­thing that is real­ly actu­al­ly quite shock­ing for us to be fail­ing at. Glob­al­ly, we are fail­ing to have any impact at all against human traf­fick­ing. And at the same time, we see a mount­ing body of evi­dence of a con­tin­u­ing upward spi­ral in traf­fick­ing in the vast major­i­ty of coun­tries of the world. And I think one of the lead­ing con­trib­u­tors to this lack of impact is actu­al­ly a pret­ty lousy recog­ni­tion of the caus­es of traf­fick­ing. It’s so essen­tial to be crys­tal clear on cause and I’ve been beat­ing this drum for almost 20 years and it’s still a prob­lem. And I think, frankly, peo­ple are just intel­lec­tu­al­ly quite lazy about it. If inter­ven­tions are incor­rect­ly address­ing false caus­es, that 100 per­cent leads to a lack of impact. Address­ing false caus­es means a lack of impact should actu­al­ly be the only expect­ed out­come. Address­ing, for exam­ple, a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. It would be quite mad to hope that that will deliv­er impact, if by impact, you actu­al­ly mean cur­ing some­thing. If you treat headaches aris­ing from a tumour in the brain, it would be quite remark­able if you actu­al­ly end­ed up cur­ing that tumour. You would have made med­ical his­to­ry. And the same is so for human traf­fick­ing. One of the big rea­sons for this mis­take, as the cause, is the com­mon, but com­plete­ly false under­stand­ing, that traf­fick­ing is lin­ear. It’s the very def­i­n­i­tion of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fal­la­cy. I think you all know it: It fol­lows, there­fore, it was caused by. Although it’s wide­ly, very wide­ly taught this way, traf­fick­ing is not lin­ear. It is cir­cu­lar. A poor woman being recruit­ed and moved from a rur­al loca­tion in Mex­i­co to a broth­el in Texas, does not make the con­di­tions of the vic­tim at that time, in that place, the cause. Being poor is not the cause, being female is not the cause, being Mex­i­can is not the cause. So let’s just be very clear, I’m going to real­ly ham­mer the time, if I can. Let’s be super clear about cau­sa­tion. In iden­ti­fy­ing cause, we should be look­ing not for these incon­se­quen­tial forces that launch boats into the stream, but rather seek the source of the stream itself. It’s pret­ty sim­ple to be clear on cause. Find out what makes it all hap­pen, and you have the cause. Once you find the cause, it’s recog­nis­able by being a rule with few, if any, excep­tions. So because most peo­ple are poor before being traf­ficked, does not make pover­ty the cause. The vast major­i­ty of peo­ple in pover­ty are nev­er traf­ficked. The same fal­la­cy applies to oth­er vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty fac­tors. In migra­tion con­text, they’re often cor­rect­ly called push fac­tors. Domes­tic vio­lence, being in pros­ti­tu­tion, illit­er­a­cy, lack of cit­i­zen­ship, being a woman, eth­nic­i­ty, age. These all are con­trib­u­to­ry con­di­tions that may exist in a sup­ply coun­try, but that doesn’t make them a cause. I mean, if we apply that log­ic along most any oth­er sub­ject, if you think about it very clear­ly, we would see the cause of mur­der as the gun, not the shoot­er. Or we would see the cause of rape, being a woman or wear­ing a short skirt. It’s patent­ly ridicu­lous. Of course it is. But who thinks about this when we talk about human traf­fick­ing? There is iden­ti­fi­able cause in traf­fick­ing. It’s not hard, but you have to apply sys­tems think­ing, not lin­ear think­ing. Because if you think about the crim­i­nal process, it’s lin­ear. Crim­i­nal process­es are, that’s why the crim­i­nal law is writ­ten like that. If you ele­vate your view above mere process, in fact, you can’t help but see it. Con­sid­er con­cep­tu­al­ly for a sec­ond, the forces at work, move back­wards behind the specifics of indi­vid­ual cas­es, and then back fur­ther behind sets of cas­es, and class­es of cas­es, and look more towards the sources of all cas­es. And the sin­gle force that every case of traf­fick­ing comes back to at some point, is demand. It pre­cedes the move­ment of the per­son. It pre­cedes the recruit­ment of a per­son. It always pre­cedes their traf­fick­ing. A demand always pre-exists and that demand is quite sim­ply the dri­ver. And address­ing that dri­ver is the only way to have any impact what­so­ev­er. Sor­ry? You want me to stop? No, you don’t want me to stop. Okay. So it was always thus, right. Address­ing the dri­ver is the only way to have any impact. If we’re talk­ing exclu­sive­ly about traf­fick­ing for the sex­u­al exploita­tion of women, the traf­fick­ing of any par­tic­u­lar woman from any loca­tion, on any giv­en day, is dri­ven by a demand for paid sex­u­al ser­vices by some­one with those char­ac­ter­is­tics. The rea­son it does not hap­pen to every­one is that there needs to be a con­ver­gence. So this is where expe­ri­ence as a fed­er­al agent comes in. We look at con­ver­gences of cir­cum­stances. But a con­ver­gence of the pre-exist­ing demand for that woman, with crim­i­nal oppor­tu­ni­ty, that is, the recruiter has access. With loca­tion, a trans­porter is active there and with a joined up net­work from point A to point Omega, and Omega is the point of exploita­tion, is what makes one per­son a traf­fick­ing vic­tim and an almost iden­ti­cal per­son, not a traf­fick­ing vic­tim. A net­work dri­ven by, moti­vat­ed by, direct­ed by, reward­ed by someone’s demand for that vic­tim, at that place, at that time. It’s real­ly very spe­cif­ic. For the pur­pose of my inter­ven­tion, I think Michel would like me to make this the point of my inter­ven­tion, is to point out that the cause of traf­fick­ing for sex­u­al exploita­tion is to sat­is­fy demand for paid sex­u­al ser­vices. That’s it. It’s not more com­pli­cat­ed than that. Illic­it mar­kets are just like lic­it mar­kets, and they’re dri­ven by demand, not sup­ply. It’s some­thing we learned in the world of coun­ternar­cotics very ear­ly on. We didn’t change the way we did things because there was so much invest­ed in sup­ply side ini­tia­tives on nar­cotics. But at the same time, we recog­nised that the demand was where we need­ed to do things to be effec­tive. Because sup­ply, quite seri­ous­ly, with drugs, as with peo­ple, is infi­nite. If we acknowl­edge traf­fick­ing is a response to a demand that com­plete­ly changes our under­stand­ing about what we need to do. Have a think about all of the mea­sures you find,  that you know about, you read about, Thom­son Reuters Foun­da­tion is always writ­ing about them, about human traf­fick­ing, and con­sid­er for a moment how many of them address demand and how many of them do every­thing else? Glob­al­ly, bil­lions of dol­lars are spent every year on sup­ply side mea­sures and the treat­ment of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. There is an entire glob­al move­ment, an entire busi­ness, entire indus­try, built on using human traf­fick­ing mon­ey to address vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties such as pover­ty, illit­er­a­cy, etc. And address­ing pover­ty and illit­er­a­cy is very impor­tant. But it’s not a human traf­fick­ing ini­tia­tive. It doesn’t make a dent in human traf­fick­ing and nev­er will. None of them have a chance of impact because you’re not address­ing cause, if you have no hope of chang­ing the nature, the struc­ture of the sys­tem. Treat­ing the headache is impor­tant, but don’t ever kid your­self that by doing that, you’re cur­ing can­cer. Most traf­fick­ing mea­sures are focused on reduc­ing these vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and lim­it­ing these fac­tors in sup­ply coun­tries. Where­as the causal demand side remains almost com­plete­ly neglect­ed. So if we just invert our view for a sec­ond, if we just decide that it is demand that caus­es illic­it mar­kets, this means we have to have a very good think about every­thing that we’re cur­rent­ly doing and espe­cial­ly, every­thing that is cur­rent­ly being fund­ed by these mas­sive fund­ing agen­cies that deal with human traf­fick­ing and mod­ern slav­ery around the world. All human traf­fick­ing is a mar­ket response to a demand for peo­ple to per­form cer­tain acts of ser­vice. Now I adopt, I became a bit of a schol­ar of behav­ioral eco­nom­ics, so I adopt a pure eco­nom­ic def­i­n­i­tion. But effec­tive demand is a will­ing­ness to buy, cou­pled with a capac­i­ty to buy. And so this is where we see the pop­u­lar cat­e­gori­sa­tion of the three Ds. You’ve prob­a­bly all heard this: dirty, dan­ger­ous and degrad­ing. It comes into play. Where there exists a demand for some­one to do dirty, or dan­ger­ous or degrad­ing, or all three, that’s where traf­fick­ers will say, “There’s prof­it” and act to sup­ply the ser­vices as a result. It’s the demand per­cep­tions of the traf­fick­ers that are at the heart of demand for traf­ficked vic­tims. A crit­i­cal point to be made is the sheer waste of time in dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between the man who buys sex from a traf­ficked woman, and the man who buys sex from any woman, because one very sim­ple and trag­ic fact, is that those men who buy sex do not care about the iden­ti­ty or the sit­u­a­tion of the woman at hand. Their demand is face­less, name­less, and consent­less. So to under­stand the buyer’s side as the start of this demand equa­tion and think­ing about where we could act, behav­ioral eco­nom­ics could be actu­al­ly real­ly help­ful. Sex­u­al ser­vices are high­er order wants. Fac­tors that influ­ence and change demand for high­er order wants, can shift the demand curve. And they include changes in tastes and pref­er­ences, includ­ing, for exam­ple, racism, con­ve­nience and avail­abil­i­ty, which includes, of course, things like risk of detec­tion and cost of detec­tion, changes in real or dis­pos­able income, changes in pop­u­la­tion, like gen­der equal­i­ty, for exam­ple. This is why Swe­den is such a hub for things like the Nordic Mod­el because of the high lev­els of gen­der equal­i­ty. Changes in the price of sub­sti­tutes or oth­er goods, expec­ta­tions about the future and change in dis­tri­b­u­tion of income in soci­ety. So one very impor­tant thing, and I think I’m run­ning out of time maybe, but now a real­ly impor­tant fea­ture of all high­er order wants is that they are gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered insa­tiable because the high­er the gen­er­al lev­el, that is, the aggre­gate demand in soci­ety, the high­er still the demand becomes. With high­er order wants, there is an upward spi­ral of demand. It becomes self-per­pet­u­at­ing and self-rein­forc­ing. And that same demand spi­ral also works down­wards. You will all have known of high­er order wants that didn’t become inter­est­ing for peo­ple and demand start­ed to plum­met or some­thing seri­ous hap­pened, a scan­dal, for exam­ple, and demand spi­raled down­wards. And so this is the beau­ty of what has been called exter­nal economies of scale. The risk of any one trans­ac­tion in an illic­it mar­ket falls with an increase in the total num­ber of trans­ac­tions, and vice ver­sa. The risk of any one trans­ac­tion increas­es with a decrease in the total num­ber of trans­ac­tions. Do you under­stand the inverse rela­tion­ship there? The risk of a trans­ac­tion falls, but the total num­ber of trans­ac­tions increas­es. So an increase in the vol­umes of trans­ac­tions,  reduces the cost of ser­vices, reduces the indus­try­wide risk of arrest and cycli­cal­ly leads to more trans­ac­tions, and the obverse is true. So these exter­nal economies of scale are real­ly impor­tant for us because they’re self-per­pet­u­at­ing, both upwards and down­wards in their impact on demand, which means some­thing very, very impor­tant for us. If you punch an upward demand spi­ral in the guts, you can change its nature and its direc­tion. And this self-per­pet­u­at­ing ten­den­cy is impor­tant for pub­lic pol­i­cy on traf­fic, as you can imag­ine. A decent mea­sure of demand reduc­tion to arrest an upward trend of demand can trig­ger a spi­ral down­wards. Human traf­fick­ing pol­i­cy, if you real­ly intend to have impact on the prob­lem, not just issu­ing parac­eta­mol for a tumour, you should aim at the deci­sion mak­ing of buy­ers and traf­fick­ers, shrink­ing the illic­it mar­ket, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly reduc­ing the harms asso­ci­at­ed with both the exis­tence and the shrink­ing of the mar­ket. Because there will be peo­ple hurt by the shrink­ing of the mar­ket. To use busi­ness lan­guage, what we want to do, the aim is, to safe­ly reduce the total num­ber of illic­it trans­ac­tions with­in an econ­o­my, in a coun­try. This means we also pro­tect the vul­ner­a­ble for whom shrink­ing mar­kets mean liveli­hood chal­lenges, obvi­ous­ly, by employ­ing viable exit strate­gies for women in pros­ti­tu­tion. I think I’ve gone on long enough. Let me just skip to the end. While buy­ers and traf­fick­ers can act rel­a­tive­ly free of con­se­quence, their like­li­hood of engag­ing in the mar­ket increas­es; The num­ber of trans­ac­tions, increas­es, demand increas­es. It becomes eas­i­er, cheap­er and far more like­ly in a con­se­quence free envi­ron­ment, for a man to buy sex­u­al ser­vices or for a traf­fick­er to sell it. And it increas­es dra­mat­i­cal­ly the num­ber of trans­ac­tions, which is a self-per­pet­u­at­ing upward spi­ral. More trans­ac­tions leads to many more trans­ac­tions. So increas­ing trans­ac­tions is what we actu­al­ly see in coun­tries, in mar­kets where reg­u­la­tion and decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of approach­es to pros­ti­tu­tion apply. They inad­ver­tent­ly become mag­net economies. The over­flow of demand, that is, the lim­it at which the local pop­u­la­tion will pro­vide suf­fi­cient women to sat­is­fy this increas­ing male demand, it must be met from abroad. That’s where traf­fick­ing steps up. We don’t have time to address all of the pol­i­cy mea­sures that we can take. The evi­dence is crys­tal clear across the Nordic region. I know there’s a very good report just in the last cou­ple of days from Nor­way, which came out in favour of this as well, that increased per­ceived risk when buy­ing result­ed in reduced trans­ac­tions. Reduced trans­ac­tions makes the mar­ket less attrac­tive to traf­fick­ers and traf­fick­ing drops off. From a behav­iour­al per­spec­tive, the only solu­tion for impact­ing the dimen­sions of the traf­fick­ing of women for sex­u­al exploita­tion is to reduce the num­ber of buy­ers buy­ing. It’s that sim­ple. Thank you.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you, Bri­an. Very impres­sive. I want to say this will be a video on demand and I will sure­ly go back and lis­ten to this again and take every­thing in. I like that you said treat­ing the headache is one thing, but of course, you have to treat the symp­toms. Or demand is face­less, name­less and consent­less with the demand for sex­u­al exploita­tion. And as well—

BRIAN ISELIN: You have to treat the tumour if you want to kill the tumour.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Yeah. So thank you very much for this intro­duc­tion for our dis­cus­sion. Now, I want to wel­come Sr. Lea Ack­er­mann. Thank you very much that you are here, Lea. We are going on. At the moment, we don’t hear you. But don’t wor­ry, our tech­ni­cal will give you the word. We will con­tin­ue with Sandra.

LEA ACKERMANN: I would like to greet you all and am very hap­py to see you and to hear your argument.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you. So I will just give a short intro­duc­tion of whom we have here. Sr. and Dr. Lea Ack­er­mann stud­ied ped­a­gogy, psy­chol­o­gy and the­ol­o­gy, worked as a reli­gious sis­ter, sis­ter of Our Lady of Africa, for five years in the school ser­vice in Rwan­da, then sev­en years as an edu­ca­tion­al advi­sor at Mis­sion Munich, Head Lec­tur­er at the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Eich­stätt. In 1985, you went to Mom­basa, Kenya and got involved with women who were in pros­ti­tu­tion through impov­er­ish­ment and sex tourism, and this gave rise to the idea of found­ing SOLWODI, a reg­is­tered asso­ci­a­tion that works on a dona­tion basis and means Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Women in Dis­tress. It’s now in Ger­many. It’s in Aus­tria. It’s in Kenya. So you are spread­ing this net­work around the world. You got the Fed­er­al Cross of Mer­it, You are Women of Europe, and you have an hon­orary doc­tor­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lucerne. You got the Romano Guar­di­ni Prize and the Anton Mar­ti­ni Memo­r­i­al Prize. Well, thank you very much for being with us. Now, all our lis­ten­ers know who is here amongst us, but I beg you a lit­tle bit for patience because our next speak­er is San­dra. So now we have heard about root caus­es and San­dra, she knows best of us all, what it means to be traf­ficked and to suf­fer sex­u­al exploita­tion. So please, San­dra, we are very hon­oured to hear your sto­ry and what you, as a sur­vivor, has to tell us.

SANDRA NORAK: Okay, thank you for organ­is­ing this and for talk­ing about pros­ti­tu­tion and traf­fick­ing and solu­tions. I want to speak about, first a lit­tle bit about me, about the Lover Boy method, which part leg­is­la­tion plays, and also about the mech­a­nisms of traf­fick­ing, pros­ti­tu­tion, and about demand. So first, a few facts about my sto­ry, I have been through. I became acquaint­ed with my traf­fick­er and pimp, who was about 35 years old, on the Inter­net when I was a minor. At the time, I had long con­tin­u­ing prob­lems with my men­tal­ly ill moth­er, a stay in the clin­ic due to anorex­ia, as well as self-harm behav­iour. And of course, he knew the cir­cum­stances and used my vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. So when I came home from school, I sta­tioned myself imme­di­ate­ly at the com­put­er and spent a long time in dif­fer­ent chat rooms. And we wrote more and more, then every day. And he wait­ed for me online and gave me the feel­ing to be there for me. I spoke with him more and more about my prob­lems and he showed sup­port and under­stand­ing. And so it came to the first real meet­ing where he invit­ed me to eat. He was my first love. The first per­son that I had sex­u­al inter­course with. And up to this point, pros­ti­tu­tion was not men­tioned. Talk­ing about pros­ti­tu­tion began slow­ly, when he knew that I emo­tion­al­ly hang on him and he was the only per­son to whom I relat­ed. So at the week­end, I trav­elled by train to his city and after a while he took me to broth­els of some of his friends, who were broth­el own­ers. And after a while he want­ed that I pros­ti­tute myself. And when I refused, he began to explain, he had great debts and was stuck into dif­fi­cul­ties, and I’m the only per­son who can help him. So I had anx­i­ety of los­ing him, and that some­thing is hap­pen­ing to him. And so I began to pros­ti­tute myself. I became a full-time pros­ti­tut­ed woman and broke off school because I could not lead this dou­ble life. So the strat­e­gy, which is about tar­get­ed search­ing, recruit­ing, and push­ing young women into pros­ti­tu­tion for the pur­pose to exploit them sex­u­al­ly by fak­ing or sim­u­lat­ing a love rela­tion­ship at the begin­ning falls under human traf­fick­ing and is called the Lover Boy method. This form of recruit­ing for human traf­fick­ing is get­ting more and more com­mon, because it is the safest way for the traf­fick­er to escape pros­e­cu­tion. He can hide behind the alleged vol­un­tari­ness of the young women that are under his con­trol. Lover Boy traf­fick­ers and Lover Boy pimps, they look for an easy prey. They use the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of the young women, espe­cial­ly when you come from a bro­ken home, when you have already expe­ri­enced sex­u­al abuse, vio­lence, neglect in the past. These are the gen­er­al pre­con­di­tions for entry into pros­ti­tu­tion. But it’s not lim­it­ed, that only vul­ner­a­ble young girls are traf­ficked. In Ger­many, there are also women who have been vic­tims of Lover Boy pimps, who come from fam­i­lies where there’s no evi­dence of abuse or vio­lence. But they met their Lover Boy pimp when they were very young. It was their first time being in love. They were like typ­i­cal ado­les­cents rebelling against their par­ents. So we have a very… This method is very com­mon when it comes to traf­fick­ing and pimp­ing. But how some­one is able to endure pros­ti­tu­tion, what it means endur­ing very inti­mate things, being in pros­ti­tu­tion and endur­ing count­less pen­e­tra­tions by strangers; one needs atti­tudes that triv­i­al­ize this vio­lence; That it all was bear­able or not so bad at all. And how do you get such an atti­tude? If some­one is abused phys­i­cal­ly or psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly ear­ly in the child­hood, as it was with me, the affect­ed per­son is con­vinced by the idea that being mis­treat­ed is not so hard, or deserved, or nor­mal, because you don’t know how it is to be treat­ed well. In psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma­tol­ogy, this is called the offend­er-influ­enced way of think­ing. It is kind of sur­vival strat­e­gy to stand vio­lence bet­ter. So if the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion can­not be endured or changed, affect­ed per­sons often take the perpetrator’s point of view because if they act like offend­ers want them to act, the chances of sur­vival are high­er. So for exam­ple, if I do exact­ly what they tell me, they will prob­a­bly let me alone and it will not become so bad. Or words like, “You are worth­less”, can turn into, “I am worth­less”, or “You will nev­er achieve it”, can turn into, “I will nev­er achieve it.”  So this inter­nal­i­sa­tion and tak­ing over of the offender’s ideas due to self-pro­tec­tion, becomes man­i­fest until one is grown up and it deter­mines dai­ly life, not only in the form of a neg­a­tive self image, but also in the form of a lack of self-pro­tec­tion and self care. So some­one who had to learn endur­ing vio­lence ear­ly, as a sur­vival strat­e­gy often won’t lat­er be able to pro­tect against it. And for these per­sons there is a very high risk of being traf­ficked and exploit­ed. And when in addi­tion, sex­u­alised vio­lence in the form of pros­ti­tu­tion is not named as such in soci­ety, and in a State like in Ger­many, triv­i­alised as a ser­vice, those offend­er-influ­enced ways of think­ing will not be ter­mi­nat­ed, but con­firmed. So with the legal­i­ty of buy­ing sex, peo­ple, most­ly women in pros­ti­tu­tion, are taught that the vio­lence that they expe­ri­ence in pros­ti­tu­tion would not be real vio­lence because it is legal that they can be sold for sex­u­al objec­ti­fi­ca­tion and abuse. So the Gov­ern­ment sig­nalis­es with its lib­er­al leg­is­la­tion, pros­ti­tu­tion is not vio­lence, but a nor­mal job. And this point of view is tak­en over by many, many coun­selling organ­i­sa­tions too. And that is dan­ger­ous because it mis­leads a per­son to get into pros­ti­tu­tion with­out clar­i­fy­ing to them the immense amount of vio­lence that awaits them there. So I give you an exam­ple of what I mean. When my traf­fick­er pushed me for the first time into a broth­el dur­ing my recruit­ment as a young adult, I had a very bad intu­ition and want­ed to escape. I was young, unsta­ble, vul­ner­a­ble, and didn’t know how to hold myself, and which kind of dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion I was. He led me towards pros­ti­tu­tion and coerced me and said I should not be embar­rassed. “It was all nor­mal”, he told me. “It’s nor­mal in Ger­many.” “It’s just a job”, and so on. And so I remem­ber the point of view of our Gov­ern­ment, which con­sid­ers pros­ti­tu­tion as a job, and that pimps, as well as broth­el own­ers appear on talk shows being called busi­ness­men instead of crim­i­nals. So I remem­ber that this milieu was main­ly described as not so bad at all. And exact­ly this image of nor­mal­i­ty in the pros­ti­tu­tion milieu is trans­mit­ted with Germany’s State leg­is­la­tion. And so I could not recog­nise that I was on the way slid­ing into the mid­dle of a crim­i­nal milieu full of vio­lence. It was not named as a crime and won’t be named as one. So how­ev­er, our State has got a respon­si­bil­i­ty to be a role mod­el. Every State has that respon­si­bil­i­ty to be a role mod­el and provider of ori­en­ta­tion, espe­cial­ly for young and vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple. If our State had told me that, for exam­ple, with a pro­hi­bi­tion of buy­ing sex, or by talk­ing about the vio­lence in pros­ti­tu­tion, that pros­ti­tu­tion is vio­lence and a vio­la­tion of human dig­ni­ty, my traf­fick­er would have had it much hard­er to lead me in pros­ti­tu­tion because I would be warned. So how­ev­er, the sad truth is that our State believes that sex­u­al vio­lence against women is nor­mal because it’s lib­er­al leg­is­la­tion on pros­ti­tu­tion means noth­ing else. That is what peo­ple are guid­ing them­selves with. That’s how chil­dren grow up in our coun­try, in Ger­many, believ­ing that it isn’t vio­lence, when women and young girls in pros­ti­tu­tion are pen­e­trat­ed dai­ly, some­times 10, 20 times a day, and are deprived of their dig­ni­ty and worth. But of course, it is vio­lence. So exit­ing and escap­ing after the expe­ri­ences you made in pros­ti­tu­tion,  is very hard. A phys­i­cal exit from pros­ti­tu­tion, the bod­i­ly step into real life can often be man­aged, but the phys­i­cal exit does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly mean the psy­cho­log­i­cal exit. So being in pros­ti­tu­tion, you expe­ri­ence the deep­est abysses of our soci­ety, an immea­sur­able and unimag­in­able extent of vio­lence, humil­i­a­tion, lies and inhu­man­i­ty. One can flee from this life phys­i­cal­ly, but psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, hang in the thick of mem­o­ries and pain. And often due to the expe­ri­ences you have made, there is a deep belief that you are worth­less, you are unable to achieve any­thing, and deserve noth­ing else. So the phys­i­cal exit is often dif­fi­cult, but the psy­cho­log­i­cal exit is even more dif­fi­cult because it often takes years, or even decades, and it involves break­ing through pain and trau­ma. It is the slow dis­tanc­ing from an ear­li­er life full of vio­lence. And this psy­cho­log­i­cal exit is dif­fi­cult but extreme­ly impor­tant. And it’s not about for­get­ting your expe­ri­ences, but it is about accept­ing the non-erasable past to inte­grate it into your life and to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly break free from this par­al­lel world of pros­ti­tu­tion and traf­fick­ing. So to come to the end, I want to men­tion the last point, and it’s about also what we have talked about. It’s about demand. To fight traf­fick­ing and exploita­tion, we need to reduce demand because demand is a breed­ing ground for traf­fick­ing. Where there is a high demand, it’s much more lucra­tive for traf­fick­ers. You can­not fight traf­fick­ing when you are pro­mot­ing demand on the oth­er side. And when you treat pros­ti­tu­tion as a job, as a ser­vice that can be bought, like you can buy a pack of cig­a­rettes, like it is in Ger­many, you are pro­mot­ing demand. In Ger­many, we have an esti­mat­ed num­ber of 1.2 mil­lion sex buy­ers, who use sex­u­al ser­vices each day. So you can imag­ine that traf­fick­ers in Ger­many are becom­ing rich. So Ger­many is unfor­tu­nate­ly a coun­try where pimps and traf­fick­ers are able to become rich with a very low risk of being pros­e­cut­ed. A very low risk, because they can hide very well behind legal struc­tures. So thou­sands of women in Ger­many are used and exploit­ed, but nobody is real­ly see­ing this because it is hid­den behind a legal sys­tem, behind a leg­is­la­tion, that calls all the women in pros­ti­tu­tion, auto­mat­i­cal­ly, pros­ti­tutes. But most of these, and we speak about 200,000 to 400,000 women in pros­ti­tu­tion in Ger­many, they are no pros­ti­tutes. They are traf­ficked. They are forced. They were abused as a child and nev­er got to know what it means to live a life with­out vio­lence, to live a life with dig­ni­ty, or they do not find the way out after their traf­fick­ing and exploita­tion sit­u­a­tion, as it was also the case with me. So sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, there is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty to become a whole life pros­ti­tute after being exploit­ed and traf­ficked, not because you want­ed, but because you are bro­ken. And most of these so-called pros­ti­tutes are the chil­dren who were left behind when they were young, and now left behind a sec­ond time by soci­ety. So I don’t like to call these bro­ken souls pros­ti­tutes. There are no pros­ti­tutes from the heart. After my traf­fick­ing and exploita­tion sit­u­a­tion, I became also such a free choice pros­ti­tute, but not because I was a pros­ti­tute from the heart. I became one because on the one hand, I don’t know how to exit this life after my exploita­tion. So I was high­ly trau­ma­tised because of what has hap­pened. And at the end, I lived in the broth­el where I was exploit­ed, had no flat, had bro­ken up with school, had almost no con­tacts to peo­ple out­side the red light. And on the oth­er hand, I had expe­ri­enced so much sex­u­al abuse and exploita­tion that I lost my worth, my iden­ti­ty, my per­son­al­i­ty, that I thought I don’t deserve help from peo­ple out­side the red light, and that I have to do the exit on my own no mat­ter how long it takes. And when you start with noth­ing and when you have the feel­ing that the only thing you are worth is what your traf­fick­er has made out of you, a pros­ti­tute, it takes time. It takes time to find back to your­self. And hon­est­ly, a lot of women being traf­ficked and exploit­ed nev­er find back to them­selves because they had been bro­ken too much. So sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, there is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty to become a whole life pros­ti­tute after being traf­ficked. So you have a “free choice pros­ti­tute”, but nobody is see­ing the sto­ries behind these “free choice pros­ti­tutes”.  So it’s not because you want it, but because you are bro­ken. In this sit­u­a­tion, I even defend­ed my pros­ti­tu­tion out­ward­ly because I don’t want peo­ple to see how far I’m actu­al­ly down, how far I’m on the edge, and because it would hurt too much to say that it is vio­lence when you phys­i­cal­ly and, or psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, see no way to escape this vio­lence. So I was nev­er a pros­ti­tute from the heart. I grew up with the wish of becom­ing a sea biol­o­gist when I first saw the film Free Willy, when I was a child, and not of becom­ing some­one being pen­e­trat­ed one day after the oth­er. So in the mean­time, my dreams changed because of my traf­fick­ing and pros­ti­tu­tion expe­ri­ences. So after my exploita­tion, I catched up school edu­ca­tion, which I had bro­ken up before because of my traf­fick­er. I stud­ied law and I’m going to become a lawyer fight­ing against exploita­tion and for enlight­en­ment. This is what I am from the heart and oth­er women dream, for exam­ple, of being a police offi­cer, sci­en­tist, an artist, and so on. They dream about a lot, but not of being a pros­ti­tute. So no mat­ter what kind of pros­ti­tu­tion leg­is­la­tion we pre­fer, and I pre­fer the so-called Swedish/Nordic Mod­el, and fight­ing for this to imple­ment in Ger­many with a lot of oth­er great peo­ple, nobody can tell me that only one child on this earth grows up with the wish of becom­ing a pros­ti­tute, with the wish of being pen­e­trat­ed hun­dreds, thou­sands of times by strangers. Chil­dren do not grow up with this wish. So, of course, I can­not speak for every woman who is in pros­ti­tu­tion, but for the major­i­ty. And we do not have 200,000 so-called “pros­ti­tutes” in Ger­many. Instead, what we do have in Ger­many for sure, are thou­sands of bro­ken chil­dren whose dreams were tak­en away from them, and who are locked now in the sys­tem of pros­ti­tu­tion. I was just one of these 200,000 to 400,000 who are just called pros­ti­tutes, and where the sto­ries behind are most­ly unknown. So who­ev­er is lis­ten­ing here, please do not nor­malise or accept such a sys­tem, where you can find so many bro­ken lives and souls, but instead, fight­ing the sys­tem, and fight­ing the sys­tem means to fight against demand. Thank you.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you very much, San­dra. Lis­ten­ing to this painful sto­ry is painful for us. It’s a very strong tes­ti­mo­ny and you made very much clear that there are thou­sands of bro­ken chil­dren out and no so-called “pros­ti­tutes”. We have already a com­ment on what you said, “A very pow­er­ful and mov­ing tes­ti­mo­ni­al of some­one who went through the hell that is human traf­fick­ing. Thank you for shar­ing your sto­ry.” There is a ques­tion with it. We come to the ques­tions at the end of the event. I see Sr. Lea wants to say some­thing, so now I give the word to Sr. Lea for about 10 min­utes. Sr. Lea you can com­ment on it. You can share your expe­ri­ence and you can just enrich us with your wis­dom. Thank you. Can you unmute Sr. Lea? Yes, go on.

LEA ACKERMANN: I thank very much San­dra for her talk. It touch­es me very hard because I am togeth­er now with small kids. We have 40 kids in the house I have, and three of them, 12 years old, are preg­nant. It’s awful. And I see how these kids have no pos­si­bil­i­ty to grow up light and learn­ing all what’s hap­pen­ing around. They are real­ly used, and that is awful. I thank you San­dra, that you speak, that you touch us, that it is a very crim­i­nal act, and that we arrange that these crim­i­nals are very much in jail and every­thing, because they are crim­i­nals, and they do so much harm to chil­dren and young women. It’s just awful. And I can­not under­stand that in Ger­many we can­not for­bid pros­ti­tu­tion. Because that is always vio­lence, it’s nev­er free. I believe I have spo­ken with a lot of women in pros­ti­tu­tion, and nev­er call them “pros­ti­tutes”. I always say “women in pros­ti­tu­tion”, because they are not free in that. Even when they say, “Oh, I make that.” I think alto­geth­er what’s hap­pened, that the women accept this very act of vio­lence and crim­i­nal­i­ty. We will do every­thing that it gets for­bid­den in Ger­many, like in the oth­er coun­tries, Swe­den, and so on. Thank you.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you, Lea. We will explore this more, what you spoke about some more. It’s not real­ly the Nordic Mod­el because pros­ti­tu­tion is not for­bid­den in this sense, and I think Inge Bell is a real expert to explain the Nordic Mod­el. And I would like you to give your com­ments and your expla­na­tion to this law that exists already and is suc­cess­ful. You have the floor, Inge.

INGE BELL: Thank you very much, Lea. I also want to thank you, San­dra. It’s always when we are togeth­er on pan­els like this, or con­fer­ences. Though I know your sto­ry and I know you since lot of years, it’s always very touch­ing, mov­ing, and still, I’m always hap­py that I’m not the speak­er right after you because I could sim­ply not speak after hear­ing your sto­ry, which I already know. And maybe I just want to con­tribute to what Sr. Lea said. Sr. Lea, I’m not sure whether you know that you could have now tak­en the floor longer to present your won­der­ful organ­i­sa­tion, SOLWODI. So maybe before I talk about the Nordic Mod­el, maybe Sr. Lea, who is such a famous woman, and one of the… Well, she is the pio­neer of anti-human traf­fick­ing engage­ment and action. And maybe she should speak first about SOLWODI, maybe.

LEA ACKERMANN: I’ll say some­thing. I’m very hap­py to have the occa­sion to say, I was, as a mis­sion­ary sis­ter in Kenya, Mom­basa. A par­adise. Very nice. And then peo­ple came, who had enough mon­ey to pay trav­el­ling in this par­adise, and I have seen the mis­ery and the pover­ty of peo­ple there, women and chil­dren, and they use that for their own plea­sure. So I was so angry about that, and I spoke with the women. I said, “What do you think?” And so on. They said, “Do you think it’s a plea­sure for us to go with all these idiots?” And then I said, “If you feel like that, let’s go togeth­er and think what can we do to bring you out of that?” And clear­ly, a lot of young women made school, made a pro­fes­sion. They are a teacher and oth­ers. That was very, very impor­tant. And then I have seen the chil­dren, and my foun­da­tion was SOLWODI, Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Women in Dis­tress, because I feel that pros­ti­tu­tion dimin­ish all women, if they are in pros­ti­tu­tion, or not. In our coun­try, it says, “Women, you can buy”, and things you can buy are objects. Not a per­son. So I can­not under­stand that they are not ready to accept that it’s for­bid­den. In Kenya, it’s also… The women go in prison because trav­el­ling in pur­pose of pros­ti­tu­tion is for­bid­den. And they take the women to fill up their purs­es, and they have to pay. If they have no mon­ey, they go in jail. Nev­er the men. They say, “You are walk­ing on the street only to get a man for pros­ti­tu­tion.”  So that makes me very, very angry. And the women I have met togeth­er are the same. And then I have seen a lot of chil­dren who are not accept­ed in their fam­i­ly because the moth­er was too young to get the child, or was not accept­ed, was not mar­ried. And then these chil­dren of these mis­used women, are also put aside on the street, and that’s why I am look­ing now for these women and SOLWODI, I have giv­en in oth­er hands because I’m old. But one thing I will do is always being scared for chil­dren. Young girls who are brought in pros­ti­tu­tion like San­dra. It’s so awful and it’s such a big crime, that the rest of my life, I will help these young chil­dren to get out of that, to get in school, to get healed, to get proud of their own per­son. I would like that every child can be proud of them­selves. And that is why I will do every­thing to help young girls, chil­dren, and that’s my new foun­da­tion is foun­da­tion for chil­dren in dis­tress, in mis­ery. And I’m hap­py and I see it’s very impor­tant. I can go as long as I live for these chil­dren. Thank you. SR. MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you, Lea, for these words, very touch­ing and very pas­sion­ate, and I think only this pas­sion can bring some­thing for­ward if we are con­nect­ed, and go on and go on, against all the obsta­cles that we meet in this fight. Thank you very much. Now Inge, you can explain more about the Nordic Mod­el, please. Thank you. INGE BELL: I will do so. But first of all, thank you very much Lea, for your kind words. And just to give you a short impres­sion, well I’m not a jour­nal­ist any­more, but I used to work almost 15 years for the first Ger­man tele­vi­sion, for ARD, as a jour­nal­ist with the focus on the polit­i­cal, social, and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment in South East­ern Europe. And it was the time after the Iron Cur­tain came down and lat­er on, after the Koso­vo war. And as you know, these coun­tries in South East­ern Europe and East­ern Europe, after the fall of the Iron Cur­tain, were re-formed coun­tries, post-social­ist coun­tries, with all these big prob­lems which per­sist until today: so organ­ised crime, pros­ti­tu­tion, human traf­fick­ing. And as we all know, since the EU acces­sion of Roma­nia and Bul­gar­ia, what we face now in Ger­many is that most of the women in pros­ti­tu­tion are from these coun­tries, Roma­nia, Bul­gar­ia, Hun­gary, and when Sr. Lea start­ed her help pro­grams in Kenya back in the 1980s, 1985, I think you found­ed the first SOLWODI, Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Women in Dis­tress organ­i­sa­tion in Kenya. By that time, you focused on the sex tourism in these coun­tries. But then you came back to Ger­many and after 1989, the wall came down and you wit­nessed all this influx of the East­ern Euro­pean coun­tries into Ger­many, into pros­ti­tu­tion, all the Pol­ish, the Czech, the Russ­ian, and then lat­er on, the Roman­ian and Bul­gar­i­an women, and very young women and girls who flood­ed, lit­er­al­ly, the pros­ti­tu­tion scene. And so you start­ed SOLWODI also in Ger­many. And I think we have right now almost 20 spe­cial advi­so­ry cen­tres and shel­ters in Ger­many, and also in Hun­gary and Roma­nia, and of course, the big organ­i­sa­tion which per­sists since 1985 in Kenya with what you said, so real­ly the fol­low-up organ­i­sa­tion for the girls, vic­tims of traf­fick­ing. And this is a life achieve­ment Sr. Lea, and thank you very much for this. And we came across, we met when I was still this reporter back in 1999 when the Koso­vo war took place. And I was a reporter and a war reporter in the Koso­vo war. And I came across a top­ic which nev­er left me until today. This is traf­fick­ing with chil­dren, with under­age, with minor, with chil­dren for the pur­pose of sex­u­al exploita­tion by sol­diers, by Unit­ed Nations sol­diers, by KFOR, Koso­vo Force peace­keep­ing troops. The bomb­ings in Koso­vo had just been over in 1999 and 2000, and inter­na­tion­al peace­keep­ing troops, thou­sands of Unit­ed Nations sol­diers were all over the Balka­ns to sta­bilise the region and to defend human rights and peace. But instead of defend­ing human rights, sol­diers would abuse them. These sol­diers would buy “sex ser­vices” of under­age girls, raped and forced to pros­ti­tute them­selves. They were col­lect­ed all over East­ern Europe and brought to Mace­do­nia, to Koso­vo and to the sur­round­ing coun­tries in order to sat­is­fy “the needs” of the sol­diers. And of course, I was deeply shocked by the moment. But what I did is, I did not only report about it, but I also went free­ing women from these jails because they were jailed into these broth­els. They could not go out. There were iron bars in front of the win­dows. And what we did as jour­nal­ists, we did not only report, but we want­ed to help them, these women and under­age girls. And that’s why Sr. Lea and I met, because on the long run, I could free some women out of these broth­els and bring them to SOLWODI, back to Ger­many. And what I want to say is that, I’m not a jour­nal­ist any­more, but when I was a jour­nal­ist, it could have been absolute­ly suf­fi­cient and very hon­ourable to just make this inves­tiga­tive doc­u­men­tary about this hor­rif­ic human traf­fick­ing scan­dal. Peace­keep­ing sol­diers and under­age forced pros­ti­tutes. Wow. This is sex and crime. What a sto­ry. What a scoop. Lots of jour­nal­ists would have dreamt of such an oppor­tu­ni­ty. But yes, of course, I did this inves­tiga­tive TV report and it became a huge sen­sa­tion, and it took every­body up, soci­ety, politi­cians, human rights organ­i­sa­tions, and of course, also the peace­keep­ing troops, the Ger­man sol­diers. It was not only the Ger­man sol­diers. There was Aus­tri­an sol­diers, Amer­i­can sol­diers, from France, from Eng­land, from all over the world. And today, it is a known fact that peace­keep­ing sol­diers are often involved in human traf­fick­ing or human rights abuse, and rais­ing aware­ness, as well as edu­cat­ing among the troops is stan­dard now, or should be at least. But sad­ly enough, these human rights abus­es by Unit­ed Nations sol­diers still hap­pen today. And I did not want just to report about it. I felt that I could act because when I came across these chil­dren, I want­ed to change the world of these chil­dren a lit­tle bit for the bet­ter. And I would also start rais­ing aware­ness cam­paigns about the big busi­ness of human traf­fick­ing, with my capa­bil­i­ties. So I start­ed then to estab­lish sev­er­al human­i­tar­i­an aid pro­grams for these girls. I was a jour­nal­ist and I had a lot of con­tacts with peo­ple and organ­i­sa­tions. And so I start­ed human­i­tar­i­an work. And some of the pro­grams are still run­ning until today. I wrote and write books on human rights vio­la­tion. I deliv­er speech­es, as today. I hold sem­i­nars and I teach on human rights at the Uni­ver­si­ty. And so it’s now 20 years lat­er, and I still fight against human traf­fick­ing and pros­ti­tu­tion. And some­times it seems to me that noth­ing changes. But then again, I see a lot of things change because when I start­ed, like 20 years ago, there was no Hon­ey­ball report. There was no EU Par­lia­men­tary Res­o­lu­tion like since 2014 when they said, “Well, pros­ti­tu­tion is real­ly harm­ful and please stop demand, and the rec­om­men­da­tion is please intro­duce in the leg­is­la­tion in the Euro­pean Union coun­tries, intro­duce the Nordic Mod­el.”  The Nordic Mod­el, with just since 20 years in action in Swe­den, then lat­er on in Nor­way, and Ice­land, and Ire­land, and Cana­da, and France, and now recent­ly in Israel, and as far as I know, Spain is also prepar­ing laws in order to intro­duce the Nordic Mod­el. And now I’ll come to the point: the Nordic Mod­el is about decrim­i­nal­is­ing the pros­ti­tutes, but crim­i­nal­iz­ing the “Johns”, so the buy­ers of this, I real­ly hate to say the words, of these “sex ser­vices”, because it’s not a ser­vice and it is not sex. It is rape. And it can nev­er be a ser­vice because pros­ti­tu­tion can nev­er be a job. But the basic thing of Nordic Mod­el, as Swe­den intro­duced it, is decrim­i­nal­is­ing women and girls and pros­ti­tu­tion, help­ing them out of pros­ti­tu­tion. Crim­i­nal­is­ing the buy­ers, so stop the demand by crim­i­nal­is­ing the buy­ers. It’s also real­ly sen­si­ti­sa­tion, aware­ness-rais­ing in the soci­ety, and aware­ness-rais­ing in soci­ety starts very ear­ly in school or in kinder­garten, that it’s absolute­ly for­bid­den that one sex buys the oth­er sex. That men buy women. That men can buy the access to the bod­ies of women and chil­dren. And this is a legal law for them. So this is absolute­ly a no go. But this is still the case in Ger­many. So first of all, decrim­i­nalise pros­ti­tutes or women in pros­ti­tu­tion, crim­i­nalise the buy­ers, aware­ness-rais­ing for the soci­ety, real help for the women in pros­ti­tu­tion, and no such help­ing cos­met­ics, as I always say. It has to be real help for them, real sup­port, and start­ing at an ear­ly age, and the absolute con­vic­tion or the com­mit­ment to the sen­tence, “That pros­ti­tu­tion can nev­er be on one step with gen­der equal­i­ty. Pros­ti­tu­tion is the con­trary of gen­der equal­i­ty, because pros­ti­tu­tion is vio­lence against women and girls”.  So which was a very rev­o­lu­tion­ary act by then in Swe­den,  is now agreed by most of the Swedish pop­u­la­tion. If you go to Swe­den and you ask peo­ple in Swe­den, “What do you think about pros­ti­tu­tion?”  Most of them would say, “Pros­ti­tu­tion? No, no, no, no. This is not in accor­dance with gen­der equal­i­ty. No, no, no. This is not in accor­dance with human dig­ni­ty. No, this can nev­er be a job, oh my God.”  And some­one who buys the sex­u­al ser­vices of a woman in pros­ti­tu­tion, he is seen like a drug addict or a los­er. So he seems a very strange per­son. This is 20 years lat­er in Swe­den. And when we look at Ger­many, who chose 20 years ago, the oth­er way, the way to legalise pros­ti­tu­tion, to have a lib­er­al thought on this, to think, “Okay, we might get the women out of the stig­ma­ti­sa­tion, when we intro­duce a more lib­er­al law and we do some reg­u­la­to­ry things in our leg­is­la­tion”.  But now when you ask some­one here in Ger­many, on the street, “What do you think about pros­ti­tu­tion?”  Then you would have the answer, “Pros­ti­tu­tion. Oh, that’s cool. Well, it’s just sex work, and if they choose to do it vol­un­tar­i­ly, that’s just cool”.  Which is real­ly sad because what hap­pens in Ger­many is now that the whole world is look­ing upon Ger­many, like we look into Amer­i­ca, into the US leg­is­la­tion on arms, on weapons. We real­ly think, “Oh my God, weapons are legalised there and every one can have weapons and arms” and we think, “Oh my God, how is this pos­si­ble?”  And the whole world looks on Ger­many and says, “Oh my God, how is this pos­si­ble they legalised pros­ti­tu­tion and all the women are sex­u­al­ly exploit­ed”, and you lit­er­al­ly see what hap­pened with this East­ern Europe thing that all the young Bul­gar­i­an and Roman­ian women and girls come over to Ger­many and flood the pros­ti­tu­tion mar­ket there and are exploit­ed. They are not work­ers. They are just exploit­ed. They are vic­tims, vic­tims of vio­lence. “And oh my God, what is Ger­many doing here?”  So we are looked upon like the broth­el of Europe, and Ger­many, as the broth­el of Europe, Ger­many should be a light­house. It should send out a sig­nal against pros­ti­tu­tion, against exploita­tion, and against vio­lence against women in pros­ti­tu­tion. But it is not. Not yet. But what I can tell you, as I said before, that I wit­nessed 20 years of slow change, but I’m real­ly, very hap­py to tell you that about one month ago in Ger­many, was found­ed a big­ger alliance, an Alliance Nordic Mod­el (“Bünd­nis Nordis­ches Mod­ell”) in which unite now more than 30 organ­i­sa­tions. Among them, of course, big organ­i­sa­tions like SOLWODI, like SISTERS, which is rep­re­sent­ed by San­dra here in this pan­el, and also by Terre des Femmes, which is my organ­i­sa­tion, where I’m the Vice-Pres­i­dent. So it’s not only the big organ­i­sa­tions with char­i­ties and women’s rights, but it’s also the grass­root ini­tia­tives. And also Church, Katholis­ch­er Deutsch­er Frauen­bund, the Catholic Alliance, a Ger­man Women’s Alliance is also with­in this alliance for the Nordic Mod­el. So we have this broad­er alliance now with hun­dreds and thou­sands of mem­bers which advo­cate for the Nordic Mod­el. And it has to have a joint approach towards the politi­cians in order to change this absurd leg­is­la­tion, leg­is­la­tion which is sim­ply laughed at, for exam­ple, by the coun­tries of the Nordic Mod­el. Well, it’s not laughed at, but it’s seen with a tear in the eyes because it’s so anti-human­is­tic. It’s so anti-human­is­tic. So with one word, we have failed in Ger­many with our leg­is­la­tion of lib­er­al­is­ing and reg­u­lat­ing pros­ti­tu­tion, and we made thou­sands, hun­dred thou­sands of girls and women, vic­tims of vio­lence by this leg­is­la­tion. And it’s high time now to change, to change the view, to change the per­spec­tive on pros­ti­tu­tion to that what it is: it’s pure and sim­ply vio­lence against women. And we can­not sup­port a sys­tem which is doing harm to thou­sands, ten thou­sands, hun­dred thou­sands, women and chil­dren in pros­ti­tu­tion. We must change the sys­tem: help­ing the vic­tims, crim­i­nal­is­ing the “Johns” who cre­ate this demand, and real­ly aware­ness-rais­ing among the pop­u­la­tion. And as the end of my talk, I would like to give, as cyn­i­cal as it may sound, but I want to give the voice to three “Johns”.  I’m quot­ing now from one of the human rights activists, which is also in the Alliance for the Nordic Mod­el. She col­lects quotes from “Johns”, and I would real­ly like to give a quo­ta­tion to one of the “Johns”. So let me see where it is. One moment. Here it is. “I booked this ani­mal once” so what I quote is from an Inter­net forum, because in Ger­many you can eas­i­ly access broth­els or women in pros­ti­tu­tion via the Inter­net. There are lots of forums where the “Johns” can write about their expe­ri­ences, or about the women and girls. So, “I booked this ani­mal once. Her apart­ment stinks of cat piss. Also, the bed was bro­ken and the so-called exe­cu­tion mat­tress is so filthy that you can catch all kinds of things. She wasn’t shaven, even though I demand­ed that. Fur­ther, she kept try­ing to get me to pay extra, and I had to keep con­sult­ing her boyfriend or her pimp.”  So one Ger­man sex buy­er, or “John” who wrote in one forum. I have anoth­er one. “You got young women from Hun­gary, some­times so thin­ly clothed that it amounts to Chris­t­ian char­i­ty to take them inside and warm them up with your body for half an hour or so. The beds are a cat­a­stro­phe. You can see a trace of the pre­vi­ous guy’s sperm. You can imag­ine that you’re just pick­ing up a young girl, which is neat.”  And the third voice: “Is a whore just a piece of fuck meat? Or does one have to show respect? I’ve been won­der­ing if my approach is the rule. To me, a whore is just a thing that’s there to sat­is­fy me. I do my part by pay­ing. Now, I’ve noticed that espe­cial­ly hob­by whores have been get­ting more bitchy and annoy­ing, while ask­ing for more and more cash. Have any of you noticed the same?”  So with these quotes you can eas­i­ly see that when there is a pur­chas­ing act of so-called “sex ser­vices”, then there is no eye-lev­el with a human being, with a woman or with a girl. It is just a thing. It’s just an object. So there­fore, pros­ti­tu­tion can nev­er be a job when there is no human being doing this job, but a thing, a robot, an object. So I want to close my talk with this: Ger­many, and not only Ger­many, the whole Euro­pean Union has to intro­duce the Nordic Mod­el because all the mod­els, until today, abo­li­tion mod­el, so crim­i­nal­is­ing pros­ti­tutes, and lib­er­al­is­ing or reg­u­lat­ing the pros­ti­tu­tion, have failed. So the Nordic Mod­el is the only left of a chance to get gen­der equal­i­ty and human rights for women and girls. Thank you.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you, Inge. What can I say? The whole cru­el­ty of what’s going on, was just described, not by you, but by the facts them­selves. So that speaks for itself. Thank you very much for these com­pre­hen­sive insights. And now we have already a lot of sup­port for San­dra, and many peo­ple thank her for her pow­er­ful mes­sage. So I will go and read more. There are also ques­tions now. For exam­ple, “I once read that sex­u­al ser­vices are the old­est pro­fes­sion in the world. Would you agree with this state­ment? And if this is the case, what is the prog­no­sis of address­ing demand? How dif­fi­cult is it to address demand, if it was sup­pos­ed­ly always there?” So could you just com­ment on this? Who would like to start?

BRIAN ISELIN: “Pros­ti­tu­tion, the old­est pro­fes­sion in the world” is one of the most ridicu­lous state­ments ever, and it’s obvi­ous­ly made up by a man to jus­ti­fy the cre­ation and the con­tin­u­a­tion of the insti­tu­tion. It’s just patri­archy, right. That’s a state­ment that comes straight from the mouth of patri­archy. Just because some­thing is, doesn’t mean it always needs to be that way. And the solu­tion, of course, is it comes from the mouth of patri­archy: Dis­man­tle patri­archy. Wher­ev­er we see change com­ing, pos­i­tive change in this respect, so I’m talk­ing about Swe­den, Nor­way, now Ire­land and a few oth­ers, wher­ev­er you see the Nordic Mod­el being intro­duced, the Equal­i­ty Mod­el now it’s being called, there is often this, I use it as a kind of a proxy indi­ca­tor, the num­ber of women in Par­lia­ment, as a proxy indi­ca­tor. So you can look at the num­ber of women in Par­lia­ment in the coun­tries where it’s been intro­duced. There is a cer­tain reduc­tion of patri­archy in the coun­tries where the Nordic Mod­el is intro­duced. There’s almost like there’s a tip­ping point, I think. Ger­many is like 31 per­cent. Swe­den has 47 per­cent women in Par­lia­ment. Nor­way is 41 per­cent. Maybe 40 is the num­ber, I don’t know. But there seems to be a num­ber where you can start to achieve change, dis­man­tling patri­archy, when the men in that soci­ety start to believe in the equal­i­ties that are need­ed, and start to believe that pros­ti­tu­tion is vio­lence against women. So there seems to be this tip­ping point. I don’t know whether any­body else has observed such a proxy indi­ca­tor for it.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you. Some­body else? Oth­er­wise, I have anoth­er very inter­est­ing ques­tion. A ques­tion about the lan­guage you are using, and maybe that is one of the things the pub­lic needs to be more edu­cat­ed about. “I was recent­ly told by a per­son run­ning an advice cen­tre for women work­ing in pros­ti­tu­tion in my city, to please avoid the word pros­ti­tu­tion, as it is demean­ing. Instead, she advised me to use words like sex­u­al or sex work­ers. Now I hear a very dif­fi­cult lan­guage here. In your view, what would be an appro­pri­ate lan­guage to use to talk about this? What would be a lan­guage that would help to raise awareness?”Thank you for this ques­tion. Who would like to explain or to answer? San­dra, yeah.

SANDRA NORAK: Okay, so that is one point where I was also talk­ing, not a lot, but a lit­tle bit in my talk, that we, in Ger­many, have also a lot of coun­selling sta­tions using the term “sex work­ers”, and it’s a “job like any oth­er”.  And the prob­lem with this lan­guage is that… So I’m just speak­ing now from Ger­many because I don’t know about the coun­try where this ques­tion came from. But in Ger­many, we have a very strong pro-pros­ti­tu­tion lob­by who spread the word that we have to use the word “sex work­er” because pros­ti­tu­tion is stig­ma­tis­ing. And for all the women I’m work­ing with, it’s com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, because if you use the word “sex work”, then you are telling this woman who was abused and who expe­ri­enced a lot of vio­lence in pros­ti­tu­tion, that this was just work, you know? And for them, it’s not stig­ma­tised to to be called pros­ti­tut­ed women, but for them it is stig­ma­tis­ing to be called sex work­ers because this hides the vio­lence and the abuse they have gone through in their lives. And it’s mak­ing vio­lence invis­i­ble because when you call some­thing work, you hide the vio­lence behind this and the actu­al prob­lem of pros­ti­tu­tion. So all the women I know, who have expe­ri­enced a lot  of vio­lence in pros­ti­tu­tion, they hate the word sex work­ers because they don’t feel tak­en seri­ous­ly. And they don’t under­stand that peo­ple who use the word sex work, for me and the women I am talk­ing about, they do not real­ly under­stand the sys­tem of pros­ti­tu­tion, because as we talked all in our speech­es in the last one hour, when you call a sys­tem work, where so many peo­ple are suf­fer­ing and expe­ri­ence so much vio­lence, you can­not call this work. So it’s stig­ma­tis­ing to call them sex work­ers. So I real­ly hate the word sex work­ers. And if some­body calls me sex work­er, then I real­ly feel bad and I real­ly feel stig­ma­tised because this is not what I have expe­ri­enced. I have expe­ri­enced traf­fick­ing, forced pros­ti­tu­tion and pros­ti­tu­tion. But I nev­er expe­ri­enced “work”.  This was not work because, as Inge said, it’s nei­ther sex nor work, what you expe­ri­ence there. Yeah.

INGE BELL: Maybe I can add to this as well. Just short­ly, and then you Bri­an. What my best prac­tice is, mean­while, I always try not to speak about pros­ti­tutes, but about women and girls in pros­ti­tu­tion, because they are human beings, women and girls in pros­ti­tu­tion, and pros­ti­tu­tion is the sys­tem. So they’re not pros­ti­tutes and they’re not char­ac­terised by the sys­tem. They hap­pen to be in that form of sex­u­al exploita­tion, which is called pros­ti­tu­tion. So women and girls in pros­ti­tu­tion. And then there’s this oth­er aspect, sex work. I would nev­er use this as well, nei­ther sex nor work. What I always find very inter­est­ing is, for exam­ple, one oth­er woman who was a sur­vivor of pros­ti­tu­tion, she always says, “Sex should be some­thing very joy­ful and lust­ful and for this mutu­al sat­is­fac­tion of the peo­ple, and as soon as there’s no con­sent… So when there’s con­sent, it is sex, okay? But when there is no con­sent or when the con­sent has to be paid, then it turns into no con­sent. But just the paid con­sent. But paid con­sent is no con­sent to sex. It’s the con­sent to the mon­ey. It’s the yes to the mon­ey. It’s not the yes to the sex. And a no to the sex is a rape. So it can­not be sex work. It’s rape.”  And then the third thing, which I always say when it comes to these ter­mi­nolo­gies, is, we in Ger­many we have three words, for exam­ple, “Sexar­beit”, “Sklave­nar­beit”, “Zwangsar­beit”.  So forced labour, slav­ery labour, and sex work. But it is not work. I mean, you would nev­er say to slav­ery that it’s slav­ery work. It’s slav­ery. You would nev­er say to forced labour in the Nazi regime, for exam­ple, you would nev­er say it’s work. It was slav­ery. It was forced. So this is the same. Pros­ti­tu­tion, slav­ery and forced labour. Bri­an, the floor is yours. BRIAN ISELIN: I mean you’ve said every­thing. What I just want­ed to say was that I quite often get attacked as a guy hav­ing an opin­ion on this, which is crazy because we cre­at­ed pros­ti­tu­tion. But we should be the ones to help dis­man­tle it, and the fact that we’re not is real­ly out­ra­geous. But I quite often get attacked, and one of the things I get attacked about is if I talk about women in pros­ti­tu­tion, or women used in pros­ti­tu­tion, for exam­ple, I often get attacked, and said, “That’s so dis­mis­sive of sex work­ers.”  And this hap­pens in par­tic­u­lar with audi­ences in the US, UK and Aus­tralia. If you had to nar­row down the num­bers, these are the coun­tries where it’s real­ly prob­lem­at­ic and to be fair, I think it’s actu­al­ly quite a strat­e­gy, from this, as San­dra men­tioned, the pro-pros­ti­tu­tion lob­by. It’s actu­al­ly a strat­e­gy by this school of lib­er­al fem­i­nism, which believes in the full decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion. And so they think, or they pro­pose that they’re empow­er­ing women by call­ing them sex work­ers, and want it to be called a job, want it to be taxed, etc. And yet all the evi­dence sug­gests that that’s absolute­ly a dread­ful sys­tem. And it dimin­ish­es women so dread­ful­ly, and min­imis­es and triv­i­alis­es the vio­lence against women. And I think you’ll under­stand, most of you will be famil­iar with Kath­leen Bar­ry. So if you read what she was writ­ing in the 1970s, it was strong­ly… It was a bit lib­er­al fem­i­nism, it was full decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion, it didn’t go as far as say­ing sex work­ers, I don’t think. And with­in about 10 years, she had changed her tune dra­mat­i­cal­ly, say­ing that allow­ing the full decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion insti­tu­tion­alis­es and indus­tri­alis­es the abuse of women. And so you can’t have both. You can’t have a sys­tem that says, on the one hand, women can be objec­ti­fied and used and sold, and on the oth­er side, have women treat­ed well. You will only see the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of the pros­ti­tu­tion of women, if you go down that decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion path. It just makes absolute­ly no sense to do it. But this lib­er­al fem­i­nist school is very strong­ly using this term sex work and sex work­er to mar­gin­alise men, actu­al­ly, and get men out of the debate. And if men leave the debate, I think we’re in trou­ble, right? I mean, if the men in Swe­den weren’t part of the debate, we wouldn’t have the Nordic Mod­el, I don’t think. 41 per­cent of women in Par­lia­ment or 47 per­cent of women in Par­lia­ment now. But if the aver­age Swedish man was not see­ing it as vio­lence against women, I think we’d be in trou­ble with the Nordic Mod­el. It wouldn’t be imple­ment­ed as well as it has been.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you, Bri­an, it’s good to have a guy with us and even if you’re a sol­dier, a for­mer sol­dier, so every­thing what Inge said before, you prove it hasn’t to be this way. There are oth­ers out there as well, and that’s good to know. And Lea, you want­ed to say. We need you to be unmut­ed. Wait, Lea.

LEA ACKERMANN: Is that? Yes. When I was in Bei­jing in the con­fer­ence, in the Women’s Con­fer­ence in Bei­jing (1995), there was a whole pro­ces­sion of com­fort women from Japan, because dur­ing the war, the Gov­ern­ment has select­ed women to be for the sol­dier, a com­fort. I think it’s so deval­u­at­ing, it’s a dimin­ish­ing, not respect­ing women in the soci­ety to say they are just good for com­fort­ing the sol­dier. I think it’s a whole think­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty that is influ­enced by acts like that. And these women were in the Con­fer­ence in Bei­jing, and there were a whole pro­ces­sion, and they said, “We are the com­fort women. That means we are only there to serve men.” And a soci­ety where only the men are the mas­ters, and the women are to serve them, that is not the soci­ety we wish in our coun­tries, and that is always not respect for the women, for all women, not only for them who are a mis­used, but for all women. SR. MIRJAM BEIKE: I’m already look­ing at the time, but I have one ques­tion here, and maybe every­body of you could say one short opin­ion on this, as this is the real gold­en ques­tion. “Of course, reduce the num­ber of buy­ers buy­ing. But how? So we hear a lot about it, and many agen­cies are talk­ing about demand. But I still have to get the gold­en for­mu­la of how to tack­le demand.” What would you say? Inge, you? INGE BELL: Me first? Okay. As Albert Schweitzer once said, “Even the small­est, the lit­tle what you can do, helps. Even the small steps helps”.  I only know the Ger­man say­ing, it’s “Das Wenige, das du tun kannst, ist viel.”  Even the small steps help. So what you can do is very prac­ti­cal. First of all, you can write to your politi­cians. I mean, hope­ful­ly you are liv­ing in a democ­ra­cy. So go and talk to your politi­cians and say, “No, we don’t want this to hap­pen in our coun­try because pros­ti­tu­tion is not gen­der equal­i­ty, will always ham­per gen­der equal­i­ty, will always con­tra­dict gen­der equal­i­ty, and is always vio­lence against women and girls”.  So go and talk to your politi­cians. Go and look for where you can unite and where you can approach, not as an indi­vid­ual, but as a group to raise your voice. Go and speak to the media. Sup­port the NGOs who are doing all this grass­root work, like, for exam­ple, SOLWODI, the organ­i­sa­tions which do pro­vide shel­ters, and sup­port the local organ­i­sa­tions, you cer­tain­ly have in each and every coun­try, like where San­dra is putting her effort and her pow­er into SISTERS. So sur­vivors of pros­ti­tu­tion, sur­vivors of human traf­fick­ing, they need help. They need, as San­dra point­ed it out, you go out of the pros­ti­tu­tion sys­tem, of the exploita­tion phys­i­cal­ly, but you are still heav­i­ly bur­dened with psy­cho­log­i­cal issues. So these peo­ple need help. And raise aware­ness about the top­ic in your fam­i­lies, with­in your friends and acquain­tances. So speak about the top­ic in order that it comes out of this “Oh-la-la” taboo zone, “Pros­ti­tu­tion, oh my God, vol­un­tar­i­ly work.”  So there’s a lot you can do. Rais­ing aware­ness in your field, in your friends, fam­i­lies and so on. Politi­cians, Church­es, organ­i­sa­tions, a whole bunch of things.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Lea, you are the next please.

LEA ACKERMANN: I would say some­times in the ear­li­er years, a very big news­pa­per, made an adver­tis­ing for sun, sand and sex, and they were mak­ing that in the news like that. So that was my first protest against that. And every­where I shout­ed and said, “That is not allowed.”You would not write to them, and so on. I think it’s small things. We have to be very care­ful not to allow all the small talks, jokes about that. Not accept that. I don’t know about every­where. We are not in all the dif­fer­ent places, but in the places we are, it must be clear that we are against this behav­iour against women. And pros­ti­tu­tion must be seen as a crim­i­nal act. And of course, when I have an organ­i­sa­tion who fight against it, I would like that you help me to help, now it’s the chil­dren, but it’s very impor­tant that the chil­dren are not mis­used, chil­dren on the street. And I always think each Gov­ern­ment must see that the chil­dren who live on the street, who live, sur­vive, goes grab­bing and steal­ing, when they are big, grown ups, there will be not a good soci­ety to bring them up. So every Gov­ern­ment has inter­est to give the chil­dren a chance, so the soci­ety has also the chance. That is the argu­ment that must be seen for every­one. I would like to live in a soci­ety where it’s not the crim­i­nals who have the power.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you, Lea. And the next is Sandra.

SANDRA NORAK: I am the next?

MIRJAM BEIKE: Yes. So I think the ques­tion was how to tack­le demand. I think in Ger­many it’s the prob­lem that we have this lib­er­al pros­ti­tu­tion law, which is pro­mot­ing demand because it says that pros­ti­tu­tion is a job like any oth­er. And of course, when you say it’s a job, then you have a high demand. So our com­mu­ni­ty, our soci­ety, is also socialised in the point of view that demand is noth­ing bad, but demand is some­thing nor­mal, like as I said before, you can buy a pack of cig­a­rettes, or you can buy a human being. And so to tack­le the demand, it first needs the con­scious­ness of the peo­ple that this is wrong what they do, that they are destroy­ing lives, that most of the women are not there by free choice. And when they are there by free choice, they have expe­ri­enced abuse before. So that is not “sex work”, but the pros­ti­tu­tion sys­tem is a whole cir­cle of vio­lence and abuse. And you have to enlight­en soci­ety about that. And also imple­ment­ing the Nordic Mod­el, which tack­les demand, where buy­ing “sex­u­al ser­vices” is a crime, because in Ger­many I see no oth­er way to reduce demand, to tack­le demand, because if you can buy, if it’s allowed, to buy a pack of cig­a­rettes, you will buy this pack of cig­a­rettes. And men will not stop buy­ing the bod­ies of women, as long as it is not for­bid­den. So the very first step is to not allow buy­ing sex, and then also to edu­cate. In Swe­den, they have pro­grams, also in France, that if police is catch­ing a sex buy­er, he has to go to a pro­gram where he is told what he does wrong, what is the con­se­quence of what he did, what’s the sto­ry of a per­son who is in pros­ti­tu­tion. She is maybe traf­ficked. So it needs also edu­ca­tion then on the buy­er side. Yes. SR.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you, San­dra. Now Bri­an, how to tack­le demand?

BRIAN ISELIN: Raise our chil­dren to know that con­sent to access their bod­ies can nev­er be bought. There’s lots of oth­er things we can do, of course, the Nordic Mod­el is why we’re here: so impris­on­ment, crim­i­nal records, sex offend­er lists, edu­ca­tion and pub­lic infor­ma­tion. On the law enforce­ment side: break­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion between buy­ers and sell­ers, increas­ing the dis­tance, reduc­ing the con­ve­nience of it. More women in Par­lia­ment, as I said before. That seems to be the tip­ping point. Tell men it’s not okay, because as soon as you legalise some­thing, you tell them that it’s okay. And I just want to close on one point. There’s my favourite say­ing from the Roman poet, Vir­gil, was that “from a sin­gle crime, know a Nation”.  I think that there’s actu­al­ly no bet­ter test of the qual­i­ty of a Nation, of a soci­ety, than how they address the traf­fick­ing of women for pros­ti­tu­tion. It is a litmus.

MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you very much. So as we are already a lit­tle bit over time, I would close this round and give back to Michel.

MICHEL VEUTHEY: Okay, yes. At the end of this first webi­nar, allow me to thank not only Sr. Mir­jam, but also all speak­ers and organ­is­ers, and includ­ing our web­mas­ter Yves Reichen­bach, and my assis­tant, Clara Isep­pi. My grat­i­tude to all speak­ers for the clear, pow­er­ful state­ments, and even mov­ing tes­ti­monies. We shall use your strong argu­ments to advo­cate for the adop­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of the Nordic Mod­el in Ger­many and in Europe. We shall meet again next Tues­day, the 20th of April, at the same time, to con­tin­ue the dis­cus­sion and see the impor­tance of sup­ply chain con­trol and the role of con­sumers in rela­tion to forced labour. And the last of these three webi­na­rs, on the 27th of April, shall deal with the role of tech­nol­o­gy in human traf­fick­ing. In the mean­time, I do encour­age you to vis­it the www.christusliberat.org web­site, where you will find a trea­sure chest of best prac­tices and access to a free online course on human traf­fick­ing for helpers and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reg­is­ter to all future webi­na­rs. Good­bye now. I wish you a good week and thank you to all for being with us tonight. I was very hap­py to see you again, Sr. Lea, and to know Inge Bell, and to know San­dra Norak. And of course, our good friend Bri­an Iselin is always a gem of a speak­er and a very pow­er­ful speak­er and we shall lis­ten to him, lis­ten to Sr. Miri­am, again. And again, have a good night and thanks to every­one. Goodbye.

BRIAN ISELIN: Thanks, Michel. Take care. Nice to meet you all.

MICHEL VEUTHEY: Yeah. SR. MIRJAM BEIKE: Thank you.