Global Issues

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France

• About 20,000 people in France’s commercial sex trade. About 80% are foreigners. Most likely forced into prostitution.

• Destination and transit country for men, women, and children from Eastern Europe, West Africa, and Asia, as well as the Caribbean and Brazil, subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor.

• Limited source country for French citizens subjected to forced labor and forced prostitution.

• Sex trafficking networks controlled by Bulgarians, Romanians, Nigerians, and French citizens who force women into prostitution through debt bondage, physical force, and psychological coercion, including the invocation of voodoo.

• Reports significant number of children, primarily from Romania, West Africa, and North Africa, are victims of sex trafficking in France.

• Women and children from Brazil were subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking in the French overseas territory of French Guiana.

• 2.5% of women reported intimate partner physical violence in 2002.

• 0.9% of women report sexual intimate partner violence in 2002.

 

Advocacy:

• The Union of Sex Work (acronym STRASS)  defends the rights of sex workers, prostitutes but also escort girls / boys, pornographic actors and phone sex operators.

Sources: UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data: Surveys by Country 2011; U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011; Sex Work Activists, Allies and You