Global Issues

Netherlands

• Estimated 8,000 prostitutes in Amsterdam.

• 250 listed brothels in Amsterdam in 1997.

• In Amsterdam, 80% of prostitutes are foreigners, and 70% have no immigration papers, suggesting that they were trafficked.

• Source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor.

• Women from the Netherlands, Nigeria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Sierra Leone were the top six countries of origin for identified female victims of forced prostitution in 2010.

• Groups vulnerable to trafficking include unaccompanied children seeking asylum, women with dependent residence status obtained through fraudulent or forced marriages, women recruited in Africa, and East Asian women working in massage parlors.

• Criminal networks often involved in forced prostitution and forced labour involving foreigners.

• Those involved in forced prostitution of Dutch residents work independently, recruit through the Internet, and exploit one to two victims at a time.

• National police force reported in 2010 human traffickers increasingly took their victims to customers in hotels.

• 21% of women in Netherlands report intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 10% reported experiencing some form of physical, sexual, or mental abuse at least weekly

• 4% had been raped.

 

Advocacy:

• De Rode Draad (The Red Thread) – founded in 1985 by (ex) sex workers to fight for sex workers’ rights.

 

Sources: UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data: Surveys by Country 2011; U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report; U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011; Coalition Against Trafficking in Women; Huffington Post, Dec. 1, 2011