A new law – the first of its kind in Europe and across the rest of the world – is giving sex workers in Belgium basic employment rights.
Prostitution in Belgium is legal, after it was decriminalised in the summer of 2022, with around 30,000 people working in the industry since then.
In a historic first, they will be given a number of rights, and they work will be treated like any other job.
Under the new law, they will be entitled to official employment contracts, health insurance, pensions, maternity leave and sick days.
The law also ensures that sex workers are protected against job-related risks, and imposes conditions on employers.
Erin Kilbride, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, described the law as ‘radical’ to BBC News, adding: ‘It is the best step we have seen anywhere in the world so far. We need every country to be moving in that direction.’
For many sex workers, the job is a necessity, and the law could not come soon enough.
Sophie, a mother-of-five and a sex worker in Belgium, told BBC News she had to work while she was nine months pregnant.
‘I was having sex with clients one week before giving birth,’ she revealed.
Countries where sex work is decriminalised
Belgium – sex work was decriminalised in June 2022 as a response to the Covid pandemic.
New Zealand – with the Prostitution Reform Act, the country became the first country in the world to decriminalise the trade in 2003.
When Sophie had her fifth child by Caesarean, she was told she needed bed rest for six weeks. But she had to go back to work immediately to earn a living for her children.
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Her life – and those of tens of thousands of others – would have been much easier had she had a right to maternity leave, paid by her employer.
What Belgium’s new law does not address is the trafficking, exploitation and abuse that women face in the trade.
The National Bank of Belgium estimates that this ‘unobserved’ economy accounts for 0.5% of its GDP.
Belgium is listed by the United Nations as a destination for victims of human trafficking, the victims being from Bulgaria, Romania Morocco, Tunisia and China.
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