While the authorities in other countries spend a lot of time and resources rounding up and prosecuting women sex workers, the Netherlands tolerates and taxes them.

Prostitutes must be at least 18 and their clients must be at least 16. The women who sell their bodies in brothels or the 12 red light districts with windows in the Netherlands are assumed to be self-employed.

The windows, with a red light hanging above, are rented out by companies to the women for eight-hour shifts for some EUR 60 to 150. The prostitutes work when they want and decide what services to offer and how much to charge.

The argument underpinning the policy is that allowing sex workers to operate openly will free them from the middle men, the pimps. The only person exploiting the talents of the sex worker is the woman herself. So the theory goes.

Dark side of the street

There are indications, however, that not everyone working in the industry is doing so willingly. 

A report by the national detective service in 2002 suggested a quarter of the prostitutes in the Netherlands were the victims of human trafficking. The expansion of the European Union, it said, had led to a flood of women from the east. Trafficking gangs confiscate their passports and put them to work as prostitutes.

The police conducted 42 successful investigations into human trafficking in 2003, down in the 55 cases the year before. A provisional estimate for 2004 showed an increase once more.

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