NEW YORK, NY, July 25, 2024 –  The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) applauds the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) upholding the provision of France’s 2016 Prostitution Act that criminalizes the purchase of sexual acts. This legal framework, which also offers services to prostituted individuals and rejects the notion of prostitution as a form of labor, is known as the Nordic, Abolitionist, or Equality Model.

The ECHR decision was in response to a challenge by individuals and groups that support the decriminalization of the sex trade, claiming the French law threatened the health and safety of those in prostitution and violated the right to privacy and sexual freedom of patronizers of prostitution (sex buyers) under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The ECHR unanimously rejected these complaints and upheld France’s 2016 law, noting that penalizing sex buyers is an inextricable aspect of the French government’s efforts to prevent and combat prostitution, organized crime, and human trafficking. The Court also acknowledged the democratic processes that led to the enactment of the law and its focus on the mental, social, and physical health of prostituted individuals, who are overwhelmingly women.

France has the strongest Equality Model law in the world and serves as inspiration to other jurisdictions. Since its enactment in 2016, no individual purchased in the sex trade has been arrested or convicted and 1,247 prostituted people have accessed social services, with 95% finding stable employment. Trafficking investigations increased by 54% in the first three years of the law’s passage, and 2.35 million euros collected from sex buyers have been redirected to social services for victims and survivors. Crucially, the law has triggered a cultural shift in understanding prostitution as violence, with 71% of the French public agreeing that purchasing another human being for sexual acts is unacceptable.

In 2023, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, expressed her support for the French law, stating: “The criminalization of the purchase of sexual acts has a strong legal basis in international human rights law as it is recognized as a legitimate instrument that States can resort to in order to protect anyone, including women and girls, against exploitation and abuse.”

Alongside our partners around the world, including sex trade survivors, CATW celebrates the Court’s decision as another step towards a global understanding of the Equality Model as the most effective tool to prevent sex trafficking, protect prostituted individuals – primarily vulnerable women and girls and especially of color – and invest in attaining gender equality.

We are especially grateful to our European partners, CAP International, the European Network of Migrant Women, le Mouvement du Nid, the French Coordination for the European Women’s Lobby, SPACE International, Osez le Féminisme and others, who join us in tirelessly defending the human rights and freedom of the most marginalized women and girls, and for recognizing the system of prostitution as antithetical to the fundamental right to dignity and equality.