Premier bilan de la loi suédoise de 1999 qui visait les clients des prostituées et non ces dernières. ” Swedish Prostitution Law Targets Buyers, but Some Say It Hurts Sellers”
Sweden’s pioneering law criminalizing the purchase of sex while allowing its sale — putting the criminal burden on the buyer, not the prostitute, while providing more assistance to women who want to stop selling sex — has been considered a success and a model for other countries since it was introduced in 1999. A study issued Friday by a government agency in Stockholm found that street prostitution had been cut by more than half since 1995 and that the number of men admitting to having purchased sex was down more than 40 percent.
The findings were consistent with an official report completed by the Swedish government in 2010, which concluded that the law had reduced trafficking and transformed attitudes toward buying sex.
Norway and Iceland adopted legislation similar to Sweden’s in 2009, and leading British politicians have called for the same. Last year, the European Parliament resolved to “reduce the demand for prostitution by punishing the clients.” Sweden itself is considering extending its law to make it a crime for Swedish citizens to buy sex abroad.
But as Sweden assesses the lessons of its approach, it continues to grapple with issues that could limit progress in reducing prostitution and sex trafficking, including the effects of technology on the market for sex and the rights of prostitutes themselves.
A review of research on the legislation that the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education commissioned from Malmo University found that it was unclear to what extent mobile phones and the Internet, rather than the law, may have accelerated the reduction in street prostitution by bringing buyers and sellers together electronically.