ABSTRACT
The concern of international bodies and NGOs about trafficking in women and girls into prostitution is at odds with the fact that some states are legalizing /decriminalizing their prostitution industries. The majority of Australian states took this path in the 1990s, and the Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand in the 21st century. The 1949 UN Convention Against Trafficking in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others joined up the issue of trafficking for prostitution with local sex industries by outlawing brothel keeping (Jeffreys, 1997). It made an explicit connection based on the understanding that local brothel prostitution is the foundation of the traffic. It is quite surprising how firmly this straightforward connection has been repudiated in much of the debate about how to address trafficking in the last 15 years. There is generally a scrupulous separation of ‘trafficking’ from ‘free’ prostitution in the programmes and policies adopted to combat the trafficking in women both in legalizing states and in those that simply tolerate ‘massage parlours’ and ‘escort’ agencies. The effect is that local prostitution industries are protected from any negative effect, despite the fact that the trafficking of women and girls supplies local prostitution markets. I shall suggest in this chapter that states which legalize become pimps and procurers in the global sex industry.
