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ועדת המשנה למאבק בסחר בנשים
22/06/2011

הכנסת השמונה-עשרה





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מישיבת ועדת משנה של הוועדה לקידום מעמד האישה

למאבק בסחר בנשים

יום רביעי, כ' בסיוון התשע"א (22 ביוני 2011), שעה 09:30

הטלת אחריות פלילית על לקוחות "תעשיית" המין והזנות.

חברי הוועדה: אורית זוארץ - היו"ר

מרינה סולודקין

עו"ד גונילה אקברג
מומחית בין לאומית לנושאי זכויות אדם של נשים וילדות, שבדיה

עו"ד ענת זוהר


ייעוץ וחקיקה, משרד המשפטים

עו"ד רחל גרשוני

מתאמת המאבק בסחר בבני אדם, משרד המשפטים

עו"ד יסמין צלינה קונפינו
ע' מתאמת המאבק בסחר בבני אדם, משרד המשפטים

אביטל פלדמן

מתנדבת, משרד המשפטים

תמר פרוש

פרקליטה במחלקה הפלילית, פרקליטות המדינה

איתן פרידמן

מתמחה במחלקה הפלילית, פרקליטות המדינה

בת אל שרעבי

מתמחה, פרקליטות המדינה

חגית לרנאו

הסנגוריה הציבורית, פרקליטות המדינה

עו"ד בתיה ארטמן

ייעוץ משפטי, משרד הרווחה והשירותים החברתיים

ברכה וייס

מפקחת ארצית, משרד הרווחה והשירותים החברתיים

סיון לב

מתמחה, משרד הרווחה והשירותים החברתיים

רפ"ק ליאור שלין

קצין חקירות ארצי, המשרד לביטחון פנים

רפ"ק אורית חממי

ר' חוליית פשעים חמורים, המשרד לביטחון פנים

עו"ד בוסנה ירדני

עו"ד ביועמ"ש, המשרד לביטחון פנים

עו"ד שרי רובינשטיין
מח' משפט בינלאומי, משרד החוץ

מיטל ניר-טל

מתמחה, מח' משפט בינלאומי, משרד החוץ


רות שמיר

דוברת, ממונה על מעמד האישה, הנהלת בתי המשפט

דר' נויה רימלט

הפקולטה למשפטים, אוניברסיטת חיפה

עו"ד הימת יונס

מרכזת תחום מיעוטים, הרשות לקידום מעמד האישה

עידית הראל שמש

דוברת המכון, מכון תודעה-חקר תופעת הזנות בארץ ובחו"ל

לאה גרינפטר גולד

מנהלת המכון, מכון תודעה-חקר תופעת הזנות בארץ ובחו"ל

מיכל בינט הורוביץ

מתנדבת, מכון תודעה-חקר תופעת הזנות בארץ ובחו"ל

נעמה צפרוני

מוזמנת, מכון תודעה-חקר תופעת הזנות בארץ ובחו"ל

עו"ד ליאת קליין

היועצת המשפטית, איגוד מרכזי סיוע לנפגעות תקיפה מינית

מ.א. ענבר כהן

רכזת הליך פלילי, איגוד מרכזי סיוע לנפגעות תקיפה מינית

רעות גיא

מנהלת במטה תחום קצה ותחום נערות, עמותת עלם

נעמה ריבלין

קרימינולוגית קלינית, מנהלת הפרויקט, 'קשת'

ויקה גולצמן

מנהלת השירותים, מקלט לנפגעות סחר בנשים

ורד פאר סויד

הרשות לקידום מעמד האישה

עו"ד אביטל רוזנברגר-סרי
מנהלת המטה למאבק בסחר בסמים

עו"ד נעמי לבנקרון

מנהלת הקליניקות, המכללה למינהל

עו"ד יהושע פקס

מכון ירושלים לצדק, פרויקט נועה

מתי שושני

מכון ירושלים לצדק, פרויקט נועה

מיכל כפרי

מכון ירושלים לצדק, פרויקט נועה

מריה רבינוביץ

מרכז המחקר והמידע של הכנסת

דלית אזולאי

ס.ל. חבר המתרגמים בע"מ

הטלת אחריות פלילית על לקוחות "תעשיית" המין והזנות.

בוקר טוב לכולם. אני מתכבדת לפתוח את דיוני הוועדה למאבק בסחר בנשים.

על סדר היום נמצא נושא הטלת אחריות פלילית על לקוחות "תעשיית" המין והזנות והצעת החוק שמקודמת על ידִי בכנסת ה-18, הצעת החוק שיזמה בכנסת הקודמת חברת הכנסת זהבה גלאון. נמצאת איתנו מנסחת החוק, עורכת דין נעמי לבנקרון, ונמצאת איתנו היום הגב' גונילה אקברג, מומחית בתחום סחר בנשים וזנות ושימשה כאחראית על קמפיין ההסברה מטעם ממשלת שבדיה בנושא החקיקה על הפללת לקוח. גב' אקברג הגיעה היום לשתף אותנו בהתפתחויות בשבדיה לאור החקיקה. אנחנו מציינים עשור לחקיקה שהתקבלה בשבדיה וזה פרק זמן שניתן לבחון האם החוק אכן משיג את היעד שלשמו הוא נחקק או יש השלכות אחרות. את היוזמה להזמנה של הגב' אגברג קידמו עמותת תודעה, עידית הראל ולאה גרינפטר ואני מברכת אתכם על כך. נמצאות איתנו נציגות ארגונים, ראש הרשות לקידום מעמד האישה במשרד ראש הממשלה, נציגות משרדי הממשלה ואמורים להיות כאן היועצים המשפטיים של רוב משרדי הממשלה הנוגעים בדבר, נציגים מהמחלקות המשפטיות, ואני בהחלט אשמח להתייחסותם. הצטרפה אלינו חברת הכנסת מרינה סולודקין שהיא שותפה למאבקים החברתיים בכנסת, להגנה על זכויות אדם בכלל וזכויות נשים בפרט, היא היתה חברה בוועדה לקידום מעמד האישה בכנסת הקודמת.

בפתח דבריי וכרקע לדיון, אני רוצה להקריא פנייה שקיבלתי ואני חושבת שזאת פנייה שמשקפת איזושהי תופעה בחברה הישראלית, שמקבלת לגיטימציה להשתמש בגופן של נשים כאובייקט על מנת לספק צרכים. לפעמים מדובר באנשים עם מוגבלויות, לפעמים מדובר באנשים מבוגרים ולצערנו הרב עדיין קיימת הלגיטימציה. אני חייבת לומר שלפחות בשנה וחצי האחרונות שאני משמשת בתפקיד ומנסה לקדם את הצעת החוק, אנחנו בהחלט רואים שינוי חברתי משמעותי בהתייחסות לצרכני הזנות. לפני שבועיים אירחתי כאן קבוצה של יוניקו, שיתוף פעולה בין שדולת הנשים לאקדמיה ולארגון הבינלאומי וסטודנטים וסטודנטיות. השיח בנושא הזה יצא מתוך המסגרת הנשית הפמיניסטית והוא הופך להיות שיח חברתי. הגיעו הנה סטודנטים מהאוניברסיטה העברית ומהמרכז הבין תחומי בהרצליה ומאוניברסיטת תל אביב והם בהחלט דיברו על התייחסות אחרת לצרכני הזנות ועל כך שהם רוצים להיות שותפים במאבק הזה.

אני חייבת לציין את עבודת המטה למאבק בסחר בנשים, נמצאת כאן אביטל, ואת הקמפיין שהם הובילו השנה, פרויקט woman to go, להביא את החצר האחורית למיינסטרים, למרכז ההוויה הישראלית. במהלך הקמפיין הזה החתמנו אלפי אזרחים, ואני מניחה שהעצומה נמצאת אצלכם, שמוקיעים את תופעת הזנות והסחר בנשים כשהמיקוד היה בלקוחות שירותי הזנות. בשנה האחרונה הוגש כתב אישום ונגזר דינו של קצין מצטיין שאנס צעירה בחנייה, מקרה שמבחינתנו מהווה איזה שהיא תקדים גם ברמה החברתית כהוקעה של עברייני מין, גם אם הם הגיעו מצמרת הצבא או ממסגרות אחרות ושבמקרים אחרים היו מתייחסים אליהם בסלחנות. הוא אנס, תקף ונשלח לשמונה שנים לכלא. אני חושבת שזו שורה של אירועים ומקרים שמחדדים את השינוי החברתי וההתייחסות הרחבה לסוגיה הזו ואני מאמינה שנוכל לקבל גם את התמיכה לחוק הפללת הלקוחות, כמובן עם ההסתייגויות שיהיו.

אני אקריא מכתב שקיבלתי מאזרח שומר חוק. בוועדות בדרך כלל אני מדגישה את הסוגיה הזאת; 'גבר נורמטיבי'. בכל פעם שמדברים על מישהו שאנס, אבל הוא לא אנס את הבוסית שלו, או את הבוס שלו, או את העובדת שלו, אבל אנס מחוץ למסגרת העבודה, על גבר נורמטיבי; הוא תקף באלימות את אשתו, אבל הוא לא תקף את הקופאית בסופר, אז הוא גבר נורמטיבי. אני אומרת שגבר נורמטיבי לא תוקף את אשתו, לא צורך שירותי מין, לא משתמש בכסף ככוח לשלוט באדם אחר, וחלק מהשינוי בשיח הציבורי, ואני תמיד אומרת ששפה מבנה מציאות, והמציאות שאנחנו נותנים לה לגיטימציה, כאזרחים והאזרחיות הנורמטיביים כשאנחנו משתפים עם זה פעולה.

גם במקרה של הקצין שאנס את הבחורה בחנייה, אמרו 'קצין, נורמטיבי, מהולל, משרת בסיירת מטכ"ל, ביחידה מובחרת, גבר נורמטיבי'. גבר נורמטיבי לא הולך לנערות ליווי, גבר נורמטיבי יוצר יחסים נורמטיביים עם בת זוג בצורה נורמטיבית, בלי לשלם על זה כסף ובלי להחזיק את הכוח. אז יש לי מכתב אחד: 'אני אזרח שומר חוק, נשוי ואב לארבעה. מהיכרותי עם גברים, יש לנו צרכים, אנחנו חרמנים באופן טבעי, כל המחשבות בכיוון סקס, תשאלו כל גבר בין 18 ל-60. אני מעוניין לעשות סקס פעמיים ביום, אם לא שלוש, לאשתי מספיק פעם בשבוע. כמו שאת רואה, יש פה פער קטן, ומישהו, או יותר נכון מישהי, צריך למלא את החסר ופה נכנסת נערת הליווי או הזונה. הצורך קיים כל הזמן ואת מעבירה אותי לתחום השחור, תמצאי לי פתרון, בבקשה'. אז אני מודיעה מעל שולחן הוועדה שהמטרה של הוועדה היא לא למצוא פתרון לגברים חרמנים ואני חושבת שהמכתב הזה חוטא ופוגע בגברים. אם אני הייתי גבר הייתי מאוד נפגעת אם ההתייחסות אליי היתה התייחסות כאל יצור חייתי שאין לו שליטה בצרכים. כשמעלים טענות נגד הצעת החוק, אחת הטענות היא שאם לא ניצור לגיטימציה לזנות ולא נמסד את הזנות יהיו כאן מקרים של אונס. זה מן איום שמרחף מעל ראשינו ואני חושבת שאנחנו צריכים וצריכות להפוך את זה למאבק החברתי הראוי. זה לא מאבק הנשים בתוך המערכת או בתוך החברה הנשית, אלא זה מאבק חברתי למיגור התופעה של ניצול אוכלוסיות חלשות ותשלום של כספים כדי להשתמש בכוח הזה, בכוח הכסף, כדי לשלוט באחר.

ברשותכם אני אעביר את רשות הדיבור לגב' עידית הראל-שמש, דוברת מכון תודעה לחקר תופעת הזנות, להציג את הגב' גונילה אקברג. הגב' אקברג תדבר באנגלית ויש לכולם תרגום על השולחן.

יושבת ראש הוועדה, חברת הכנסת אורית זוארץ, מכובדיי כולם. עמותת מכון תודעה, לאה גרינפטר גולד, מיכל הורוביץ ואנוכי מברכות על ההזדמנות שניתנה לנו ליזום ולארגן את השתתפותה של חברתנו גונילה אקברג בוועדת המשנה למאבק בסחר בנשים. גב' גונילה אקברג היא עורכת דין שבדית קנדית ומומחית בין לאומית לנושאי זכויות אדם של נשים וילדות. במשך שש שנים שימשה כיועצת מומחית של הממשלה השבדית לנושאים של סחר בבני אדם והיתה אחראית על פיתוח המדיניות הציבורית והחקיקתית בנושא זה. גב' גונילה אקברג היא מרצה וסופרת מוערכת, מוזמנת לעתים קרובות כמומחית בנושאים של זכויות אדם של נשים ונערות, אלימות כנגד נשים וסחר בבני אדם, על ידי גופים בינלאומיים, גופי ממשל וארגונים לא ממשלתיים במדינות רבות בעולם. אנו מקוות שביקורה זה של גונילה בארץ ובוועדה זו יקדם את המגמה המתגבשת לקראת החלת החוק לאיסור צריכת זנות וטיפול בקהילה.

שבדיה, שסללה את הדרך, ובעקבותיה הולכות מדינות נוספות, היתה הראשונה שאמרה 'עד כאן', זנות היא ניצול, דיכוי והשפלה, זנות היא אלימות ואלימות היא מחוץ לחוק. בהנחה שכבר עברנו שלב והבנו שאין בחירה בזנות ושלזנות מידרדרים כתוצאה מנסיבות חיים קשות, אנו חייבים לעבור לשלב הבא ולעצור את הביקוש. כל הפעילות הברוכה למניעה, שיקום ואכיפה תרד לטמיון אם לא ייעצר הביקוש. הגיע הזמן להאיר באור גדול את אחריותו של הלקוח לקיומה של תופעת הזנות.

למי שטוען כי הציבור אינו בשל לחוק שכזה, יש לומר - האם לפני כל חוק שנחקק מחכים שהציבור יבשיל ויתכונן לקבל את החוק? כמה נשים, גברים, נערים, נערות וטרנסיות יצטרפו למעגל הזנות עד שתגיע ההבשלה המיוחלת? למי שטוען כי רק לאחר 30 שנה של הסברה החלה שבדיה בפעילותה ליישום החוק נשמע היום כי לא כך הדבר וכי שני התהליכים קרו במקביל מאחר ולחוק השפעה מחנכת. למי שחושש שנשים בזנות תיפגענה ושהזנות תרד למחתרת, הרי שגם כאן נשמע שלא כך קרה. חקיקת החוק לאיסור צריכת זנות וטיפול בקהילה תביא למהפכה בקידום מעמד האישה ובהגנה על זכויות אדם וחשוב מכל, תגן על אלפים רבים ואולי עשרות אלפים של נשים, גברים וטרנסיות שמושפלים, נאנסים, נשדדים, מוכים, מנוצלים, נאכלים מהסמים ולעתים נרצחים כתוצאה מחייהם בזנות. תודה.

תודה רבה לך, גב' הראל, ואני אעביר את רשות הדיבור לגב' גונילה אקברג. בבקשה.

Good morning, and thank you for inviting me, and thank you for being so many here. I'm delighted to get the opportunity to actually come to the Knesset and talk to you in this very important almost watershed in how you think about prostitution in Israel. I've been given about 15-20 minutes. I'm going to do an overview of the history how we got the law, what the law is all about, and also I'm going to talk about the results of the inquiry into the effects of the law that presented its report a year ago, on the 2nd of July, 2010. I think it's important to say that this is a law that Sweden was the first country in the world to implement. And of course because we were first, and the discussion focusing on the men who buy women, men, boys and girls for prostitution purposes, had not been lodged anywhere else. It took us quite a while to get to the point where we got a law. This is not the case now. We have several countries who have adopted similar laws and also have similar effects of those legislations. There are law proposals in many parliaments, and you can ask me where later. Time shortens down when consciousness is raised in a country but also across borders. So don't worry about when I start saying, which I'm going to say, 'We started in the '70s.' It was the women's movement, in our consciousness-raising groups, when we were talking about all of the different forms of violence that women and girls were subjected to in our society, and we have those groups in many countries. What might have been different is that in some of the groups, some women who had experience of prostitution took part. And when we talked about all the other forms of violence, like rape, battering, sexual abuse, women in prostitution also pointed to the fact that the men who buy them are also committing an act of violence and that we need to look at it from that angle. It wasn't difficult for us at all to look at that. We did not have a prostitution industry that spread false ideas about what prostitution is, at the time. Now the publicity people of the prostitution industry have more access to the media.


So in 1986 the women's movement decided to put a demand to the Swedish parliament to change the legislation so that the men or those who purchase somebody for prostitution purchases actually should be criminalized. But it was also important for us to visiblize the fact that prostitution is not just about women, it's not about women who are immoral or women who are whatever description that is put on women in prostitution in the cultural or national context that we are in, but actually that what men do to women is a serious act of sexual violence, and that we need to talk about the actual prostitution act and not just about the building of where the individual who is in prostitution is being prostituted, which tends to be the case for those who want to legalize a prostitution industry.


So we put a demand to the parliament. At the time, there were very few female parliamentarians. We had about 23% of the national parliament, which is just 1 chamber (we don't have a senate), that were women. And as you know, when there are few women in a decision-making body, women's issues or violence against women specifically is not a center question.


In 1994 the women's movement had had enough of this misrepresentation in the parliament, so we challenged the political parties and said 'Unless you put every other person on the electors' list, a woman, we will form a women's party and you just watch out.' It did work. All of the political parties, except for one, did put every other individual as a female, and that led in the election in 1994 that we ended up having 45% of the parliamentarians as women. And that was key, it's not the only reason but that it was key in how the speed of getting the issue to be discussed in the legislative body.

It was the women's movement, as I said, that initiated this. We spoke with the political parties. Women who were in the women's movement were in the political parties. So it went from the autonomous women's movement to becoming a cross-party issue, and that was important to us that this is not, violence of women has to be dealt with by any political party, because it is an issue that concerns everyone.

Because of being many women in the parliament, and because of the activity of the women's movement, there was a commission put in place that was just like you here; there was the women's organizations, it was public authorities, it was the governments; it was anybody: police, prosecutors, judges, everybody, who were going to, we were going to do a whole package of laws and measures, initiatives on violence against women. And in 1998 it went so far as it went to the governments, became a government bill, and this government bill is, I think, has been key for our, in Sweden, for us, because the government bill had laws on battering, laws on sexual harassment, better amended laws on rape. There were monies set aside for battered-women shelters, finally, from the governments. There were all kinds of measures. There were monitoring mechanisms for how to see the laws worked, and stuff like that. But what was most important is that in that bill we put the law that prohibits the purchase of a sexual service, and we did that intentionally to show that this law is the same or similar as other laws on violence against women. We wanted to show that the act of prostitution is in fact an act of violence and so it should be, and there's also a short analysis on how we saw prostitution at the time. The law was voted separately, because at the time the Ministry of Justice wouldn't support the law; so she stepped down; has never happened with any other legislation in Sweden ever in 600 years. She stepped aside and ended up being the Minister for Social Affairs that supported the law. And she's now, by the way, the special representative for the United Nations on Sexual Violence Against Women in Armed Conflict, so there's a history of understanding.

The law came into force on the 1st of January, 1999. The whole world stood on the streets of Stockholm with their cameras, really. There were journalists from all over the world standing in the streets, thinking to see whatever was going to happen when we started to enforce this controversial strange and, in some cases, wonderful law. Of course nothing happened, you could figured that out yourself, because of course men had already figured out that if they were on the street trying to buy women on the 1st of January, 1999, they would be arrested; so they weren't there.

In the beginning, the police was quite contrary to this legislation. They did not like it. They were very angry about it. They didn't know how they were going to implement it, etc. And I remember when I, I started working for the government in 2000, but then officially in 2001, and I had a real fight with the police chief of Stockholm County, so it's the largest county police district in Sweden, who was just so mad and how could we and this was just the feminists who were trying to take over the world and how dared we. He retired about three years ago from his position as the police chief, and he made a point of showing, giving an interview to the largest Swedish paper, saying that in fact he had been wrong, that this law was one of the most important tools to be able to investigate procuring and trafficking cases, because it, and I will explain later why that is the case. And I thought that was kind of nice that he took that opportunity.

The law is simple in how it's phrased; it just says that a person who obtains a casual sexual relation in exchange for payment shall be sentenced for the purchase of a sexual service to a fine or imprisonment for, at the most, 6 months. This, by the way, will change on the 1st of July. On the 1st of July, the prison sentence is going to be 1 year, and I'll talk about that later. What's also interesting with the legislation, which we amended in 2005, is because we realized that some men actually buy women in prostitution, or men in prostitution for other men, for bachelor's parties or big corporations, made by a woman, to give as a gift to a visiting businessperson. So we shut that hole by saying that also if payment has been promised or made by somebody else, the person who receives the sexual service still is liable under this legislation. The legislation applies everywhere, so it's not a public order legislation that some laws in some jurisdictions, should I wait? No? It's not a public order legislation so that it just targets street prostitution. It applies anywhere somebody purchases a sexual service. So whether it is an escort service, maybe in a hotel, in an illegal brothel or, as I will show you later, if the buyer has attempted to buy somebody via an Internet site, and that's important, of course, because a lot of the prostitution exchanges now happen that men send e-mails to websites to the pimps and to order a woman to come to their hotel or to their abode. So it applies everywhere.

Another important thing with the law is that attempts are criminalized. So when you do this legislation, make sure that the attempts definitely are criminalized, and the reason for that is of course that we want to interrupt the purchase of a sexual service before the woman or the man is harmed. So the police intervenes as soon as there is an attempt. An attempt would be, for example, if it's street prostitution, if a man walks up to any woman, doesn't have to be a woman in prostitution, any woman and suggests how much; that's an attempt. An attempt is to, as I said, to send an e-mail to a website, that is monitored by the police, and that has been decided in court, in fact. And we've had a case where 1,500 men had sent e-mails and made an appointment with different, and they were all charged, which was lovely for everyone at that point; it's a couple of years ago and, if you want to know more about that case, I'll be happy to tell you.

The law also applies, interestingly enough, the only country in the world, it applies to our peacekeeping troops. So Swedish peacekeepers who are stationed in different areas in the world actually can be charged and prosecuted under this law. And we've had prosecutions. We have peacekeepers in Kosovo during the K-4, so the European Union big peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, where Swedish officers bought Kosovo women and then were fired from the military, and they were actually charged and prosecuted and convicted. And one of the men got so upset that he went to the European Court of Human Rights, saying that his human rights were infringed upon because he was, it was his right to buy women in prostitution. He lost, obviously.

So that's the law. But to have a law in our case, we wanted to set a number of principles in place, because a law without a context is much more difficult to get people to implement, you need to know why you have this legislation, and especially because this legislation in our case was new; it was a change of view on seeing women in prostitution as victims, seeing the buyers as the perpetrators, and of course seeing the pimps, the traffickers, the intermediaries, the escort-service owners, the telephone-operator owners, as also perpetrators. So what we wanted to show is that there is a possibility of changing a culture of prostitution; so a culture where it's actually accepted, or at least normalized, that some men in the society are, it's perfectly acceptable that they buy some women and some men for prostitution purposes. And I just want to talk about a few of the principles, and those principles we developed when I was in office, and those have informed not just the law but all of the work that we've done on prostitution. So support services to women; development aid to other countries. We don't give money to organizations that work on the idea that the prostitution industry should be decriminalized or legalized, for example. So the principles are important. And as you know, in Sweden we fought for gender equality for a very long time, and we've had all kinds of policies and laws and whatever. And so it's, the first principle is prostitution is a serious barrier to gender equality. As I said, if you're in a country where you want to give women and girls the same opportunities and possibilities as men have, you cannot set aside a subclass of women. And I use the word "subclass" because we know that those who are in prostitution are women who've for many reasons, first of all, the majority are women, so it's a gender-specific crime, but it also affects men and boys that are, as the women are, marginalized economically, ethnically in some cases. And we know, from all of the research that's been done on victims of prostitution, that the majority of victims in prostitution are survivors of prior violence; so they have been sexually abused often when they were children, etc. So that's an important one. We say that prostitution is a serious problem that is harmful, and it's harmful to, obviously, the women in prostitution or the man in prostitution, but it's also harmful to society. There was a feminist in the beginning of the 20th century in Sweden where there was a strong women's movement working on prostitution, and she said 'If you look at a society and you want to know how that society deals with the status and the position of women, you have to look at how they deal with prostitution.' So remember that. I think it's a very clever way to look at it.

We are also very clear that prostitution, as I said before, is a form of serious violence, sexual violence against those who are in prostitution, and that should inform both our measures but it should also inform how we analyze prostitution. If we draw parallels between other forms of violence, so, for example, battering of women by their husbands, and we apply that onto the women in prostitution, we will end up understanding prostitution differently than we did if we say it's work or a profession or whatever misrepresentation of what prostitution is. I'd be happy to talk more about that. But it's also important to us because Sweden is signatory to all of the international human rights conventions and agreements, especially of course CEDAW, and also the agreements that focus on trafficking and women. And I teach international human rights for law students, and it's always fun when we get to this point to actually look up the international instruments and read what it says, because it does say very clearly prostitution is incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women,' and that has been an agreement internationally for years, and that is what informed Article 6 of the CEDAW. So if we don't do something on prostitution, we're actually in breach of the CEDAW. And many countries forget about that. I think, and also of course in the human-trafficking protocol, the Palermo protocol as we call it, there is a particular specific article that focuses on the demand, where it says, it's one of the few articles that underlines that it is obligatory for all of the signatories to the Palermo protocol to put into place measures to discourage the demand. And so it's not just, it's not optional. This law is actually making you, if it passes, makes you in line with the international human-rights instruments, and you wouldn't be if you don't.

So a core thing, other than focusing on the demand and the men who create the demand, is of course that the women or the men or the boys, whatever, who are in prostitution are not criminalized in Sweden and they should not be. You never criminalize victims. Victims have a right, has rights. There are victims' rights principles that most countries have agreed on internationally. And not only should the women in prostitution be seen as victims but they should also have access to exit services; so, social support organizations. And those social support organizations must be funded by the state. It's not just to shove it over to nongovernmental organizations. The nongovernmental organizations should do the work, if they're good at it, but they should be funded. Shouldn't have to scrape around, like many do, even in Sweden for that matter.

And finally, just the latest principle, just to get myself to where I'm supposed to go, is that we are very clear that any measures that try to legalize or decriminalize any prostitution activities are absolutely not accepted in our country. And we also, when I was in government, we made sure that the rest of the world found out that we were against the legalization of the prostitution industry wherever it takes place, because it normalized an extreme form of violence, sexual discrimination, and it strengthened male domination in the society.

So those are the principles. Now, so this law has been in place now for twelve and a half years. And I do think that after this long time the effects are clear to all of us; they were clear to us before that, but the current government decided that it was important to have a special inquiry into the effects of the law. So they appointed a woman judge to be the leader of the special inquiry, and she surrounded herself with different experts and they spent 2 years looking at the 10-year period, so from 1999 to 2008, of the implementation of the law. They interviewed every, everyone who could be in any case, shape or form, could have an opinion or was involved working against prostitution; talked with women and men who had experience of prostitution, some of them in prostitution, some of them out, women's organizations and so forth. And they came with a report last year. And we worked with it, we knew that. We said 'Well, we knew that.' But it's nice to have it in one report. And you will get excerpts of that report, plus an article that I've written on it.

The woman who was the judge, from the women's movement's point of view, which I was then left government, and we were very nervous, because you never know. There can be political reasons why somebody accepts that position. And so we were all kind of hovering in the background, keeping an eye on it. Now it just so happens that she knew nothing about prostitution or anything. But during the two years, she became very knowledgeable and did a brilliant job in this inquiry, and now she's the chancellor justice in Sweden, so she's also the highest legal officer. But she still travels and talks about the inquiry, and she's very enthusiastic about the law, which was fun. I mean, that was what happened.

So what did they conclude? They concluded that the number of persons exploited in street prostitution in Sweden has halved since 1999, so before the law. And that's interesting of course, but it's even more interesting what they did, because they compared with the situation in Norway and Denmark. Norway and Denmark are similar countries to Sweden. The societies are similar. Sweden is a larger country. But they wanted so it was just not comparing with ourselves but actually comparing. And so they said that Denmark and Norway, during the same period of time, have three times as many individuals in prostitution as we have in Sweden. Norway has 4.5 million inhabitants; Denmark has, no, Denmark has 4.5 and Norway has about 4. Sweden has 10 million individuals, citizens, not in prostitution. The concern that prostitution would move to other arenas, so away from street prostitution into indoors, has not been fulfilled. Prostitution on the Internet and, as I said before, a lot of the prostitution in many of our countries actually takes place through websites, on the Internet. And the inquiry concluded that it has increased in Sweden, as it has in other countries, but that is not due to the law; it's due to the development of, generally, online technology, because, you know, when we got the law, it was in 1999. And if you remember, I didn't even have e-mail till 1997. I don't know, but there's been an explosive development. And I wouldn't have my iPhone with me like I do now. Sorry, I didn't mean to be commercial here. So, and also they looked at the number of individuals who are sold via the Internet, web pages and ads, in Sweden compared to the neighboring country, and they say there are a much larger number of those websites but also numbers of individuals that are sold in the neighboring countries via the Internet, compared to Sweden. There is no evidence of increase of indoor prostitution. And then she says "Despite a significant increase in prostitution in the neighboring countries during the past ten years, there is no evidence of a similar increase in Sweden." And she says "It is reasonable to believe that this is due to the criminalization of the purchase of sexual service in Sweden." We also have academic parallel Nordic research, so the Nordic countries also did a parallel academic study on prostitution, and they quite reluctantly, I have to say, came to the conclusion, the same conclusion, that there is no evidence of increase in prostitution in Sweden. That what has perhaps been important for many countries who are concerned about organized crime. And, you know, if you have a friendly market, no matter what it is, and it's organized, so if you have a friendly drug market, those who like to make a profit of selling drugs will go to that market and sell it. If you put into place different regulations, rules, laws, whatever, implementation of laws, in a market, the businesspeople would go somewhere else. The law functions exactly that way. The law, and he or she agrees with the Swedish National Rapporteur on Trafficking, which is a position we've had since 1998, who writes annual reports of the situation of trafficking within the country and across borders, because you have to look at how the local pimps move around as well. And she, both of them say that the law is functioning as a barrier for the establishment of organized crime networks in Sweden. I mean, it's not difficult to understand. And we even have phone-tapping evidence, and now also in Norway, but Swedish phone-tapping evidence where the police has listened to conversations between members of organized crime networks, for example, in the Baltic countries. So the Estonian mafia has always been interested in moving their business from Finland to Sweden, they've never succeeded to do that, but, where they suggest that they would like to bring women to Sweden, and the Swedish criminal element says 'Don't do that. It is too expensive, it's too difficult to set up shop, because this is a prioritized investigation area for the police. Go to', and it says clearly Denmark, where there's a completely tolerated prostitution industry, Germany or Netherlands, all of them say that. And I think that's important, because of course that affects also secondary crime, because organized crime networks that traffic women, they also like to traffic drugs, or they may be involved in other organized crime ways.

The law also, apart from the direct deterrent for men to buy women in prostitution or buy men in prostitution, it was important, and I notice you talked about that, the normative change. And you, who knows something, are interested in how you create laws. Laws usually have two goals; one is of course to get rid of whatever criminal thing that you want to stop. But laws can also function as a creation of a norm and expressing something that we already have decided. But many laws function actually as a normative change indicator. So rape legislation, not everyone thinks that rape legislation is necessary, but then you have rape legislation, and then you know that that's not acceptable. This law has functioned the same way. And we have, during the whole time that the law has been in place, we've done studies of the public's attitude to the law and to the principles behind the law. And the number has consistently, in support of the law, has consistently been between 72 and 80%, around. And the latest poll was, and the latest is actually even academic research, so it's even more qualitative, and at the time it was about 73%. So that hasn't shifted during this whole time. But for us it was important also to see how this law affects those men who actually want to buy, who are either buying or who are thinking of buying somebody for prostitution purposes.

So in 1996, unrelated to the work on the law, there's a study that's repeated in Sweden every 15 years, I think, called "Sex in Sweden". It is not about sex. It's about sexual behavior, all of the different things, sexual education, and it's the People's Health Institute, which is a public authority; it looks at all kinds of aspects. And they had one aspect where they did a very good academic research on interviewing men in prostitution, sorry, men who had purchased somebody once or more for prostitution purposes. And at that time it was 13.6% of all men in Sweden over 18; so every eighth man. It's low to start out with. We have other countries where similar studies, like Thailand where it's 90%. Spain, it's around 40. It depends on the patriarchal culture and how accepted it is. But it specifically depends on if you have a legal industry, because if you have a legal industry and if you have normalized the right to buy somebody, of course more men will purchase. The study was repeated by the same researchers in 2008, and now only 7.8% of Swedish men over 18 has purchased somebody for prostitution purposes, and that's interesting facts. So there's been a normative change. I used to, I don't so much now, but I used to do a lot of things in schools. And we did actually do a project in schools while I was in the government, where we have, we gave the opportunity to 65,000 high-school students between 15 and 18, to have a day where they talked about gender equality, prostitution, pornography, different things like that, which I think one should do. And in fact in the curriculum now, sexual education is not about just how you have sex, but it's about how attitudes to women, attitudes to men, prostitution, pornography and all of those things that affect, it's important to start to change the attitude of young men, because of lot of young men right now get their sexual education through websites on the Internet, and those are stereotypically violent against women, generally speaking.

About the, there was misgivings, of course, and you're going to ask me questions like 'Did it go underground,' so I'll answer that later when you ask me. But there was misgivings that it would be difficult for social workers to be able to meet and reach out to those who were in prostitution, because there was arguments that if there is street prostitution, we know where they are and, if they end up being in indoor prostitution, it's going to be difficult. I'm a social worker. I worked as a social worker for 19 years before I became a lawyer. I worked with women in prostitution in three countries, and my experience from being a social worker is that you have a responsibility as a social worker that when the group of people you work with change, you change how you work. And that is actually what has happened in Sweden. The three centers that we've had since the '70s, working with individuals in prostitution, (there's one in Stockholm, one in Gothenburg and one in Malmo), have changed, and they've done some really creative work in how to reach out to individuals who are prostituted in other areas. The social workers also work in collaboration with the police. And the police, wherever it is in Sweden, have to give, when they meet women or men, or whatever, in prostitution, have to give a referral to the social support agencies.

And I also, one other thing, it's not in the inquiry but it's in reality, is that we don't support social support agencies that just work on harm reduction policies. "Harm reduction work with women in prostitution to maintain their health and their life within the prostitution industry. All our services must have the, and give the opportunity for those who are in prostitution, to exit the industry. And that is, I cannot underline that more. The only thing if you do harm reduction is that you maintain the health for the pimps to make more money off of the women who are in prostitution.

So I want to, how much more time can I have? Five more minutes.

You can take.

זה נושא מאוד חשוב, אנחנו נמשיך להקשיב, כי אין לנו הזדמנות נוספת לשמוע, ואת עצמנו יש לנו הזדמנות לשמוע ולהשמיע עד בלי די, אז אנחנו נאפשר לגברת אקברג עוד רבע שעה, 20 דקות. מבחינתי היא יכולה לקחת את כל זמן, אנחנו נדון בזה אחר כך.

You don't know what you're telling me. I can talk forever.

But it's very important,

Yeah, it is.

Because this is, you know, a one-day chance to hear you, and we can talk among ourselves next week, and ask the questions we can ask, maybe we'll leave a few minutes to ask questions. So you can take 15 minutes and then, no, maybe 10 minutes, and then we will ask questions and you can answer.

I'll speak 10 more minutes and then,

היא תדבר 10 דקות, נשאל שאלות, בבקשה תכתבו לכם את השאלות ואז היא תוכל לענות. אנחנו נגנוב כמה דקות מהמליאה.

Okay, so I'll try and keep it to 10 minutes, and then you can ask me all of the questions you want to ask. I think it's important, because of course central to our, not just the law but all of the policies and working on prostitution and on trafficking. And we don't separate it. I want to underline that with 6 lines. The purpose of the trafficking in human beings, the majority of the victims are to be trafficked into the exploitation in the prostitution industry. And there is all kinds of evidence for that, but the United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs says in their report that about 78% of all victims of human trafficking in the world are female and are intended for the exploitation in the prostitution industry. So just to underline that you cannot separate these things, because the trafficking is just a method, a tool of the traffickers and the pimps to move the commodities around to satisfy the buyers, because buyers don't like to buy the same women all the time; they want new blood, new women. So it's not very complicated and it shouldn't be separate.

So we need to talk about the men, obviously, like, who are the men who buy women in prostitution, or buy men in prostitution, or buy transgender? This lately, the last 5 or 6 years, there's been a lot of research, speaking with men, both who have the intention or would like to buy somebody but also those who have bought. We have all the research, as I said, in Sweden, not just this number-crunching but also interviews with buyers. There's been two very interesting reports done: one in the UK, not Scotland, so England and Northern Ireland and Wales, and there's another report in Scotland. Both of them have interviewed around 110 men in prostitution. I will send or have somebody send this research to you. It's qualitative research with about 50 to 100 questions that are given to these men; some of them have, well, never mind how they found them; that's academic. I'm also involved in a project in Lebanon where we're doing the same research with Lebanese men, and there we have interviewed 110, with the same results by the way. And there's also research done in other parts of the world, because we want to prove that there's nothing culturally specific about buying somebody in prostitution. It might be, the venues might be culturally specific. The prostitution industry might be nationally or culturally specific. But the attitudes of the men are the same.

What we can find from this research, and also when we look at the statistics for the law in Sweden, and we have till, from 1st of January, 1999 to the 31st of May this year, 3,787 men have been arrested under the law; many more have been warned that if they don't back off, they're going to be charged. So the law for us is not the most important thing is to put people in prison or fine them, but we want them to stop their behavior. And the people has, because they are involved constantly in all of the venues that are left, if you would talk to, I work a lot with the police and I work a lot of with the National Rapporteur and they would all say, you know, 'Maybe 10 times as many we've stopped before they bought.' And we can see from the statistics plus the research, the men who buy are all ages. This is not going to come as a surprise to you, but I still want to go through it. They're all ages. In Sweden the youngest one was 15, the oldest one is 78, that's been arrested. The majority of the buyers are of the younger spectrum of the age limit, because men are more sexually active when they're younger, usually; usually. They come from all income classes, all ethnic backgrounds, all whatever category you would find in a society, so all religions, all subcategories you can think of. Most of them have been, are married or live with a girlfriend. So they are sexually active men. They are already sexually active outside of prostitution, which I think this man, the lecture that you were quoting, said very clearly, the man who wrote to you,

Yeah, I have another one, 83 years old.

It was a … man who buys somebody for prostitution purposes and he, I've also received many of those letters, by the way.

You can't count them.

They often have children. So men who have or have had many sexual partners are the most common buyers. And that of course I want to underline, because that dispels the myth that some people want to spread about who is buying in prostitution, which is identified as a lonely man, sexually unattractive, with no other option for sexual outlets than buying somebody for prostitution purposes. That is not true. That is absolutely not true, and it's not true in any of the countries where we have made this research. It's also not true if you talk to women in prostitution. Because I used to work with women as a social worker, I've talked to many women in prostitution. I have friends who have experience of prostitution, and they would absolutely agree. They could make lists of doctors and, everything from doctors to whoever, who buy them, depending on which venue they were prostituted in.

What's interesting also in this, all of this research, not only have we asked why they buy, and there are all kinds of reasons that I don't have to go through, because the reason's kind of the same as what the men will make up. But generally if you analyze what they say as a reason, it is a possibility to have, not to have to get so involved in trying to make the woman pleased about having to be with that man; it's a way of not having to spend much time being social; it's a way of controlling women in a way that they can't do, or they may do even other, but it's a way of, like, one of the men the Swedish researchers talked to who said 'It's like buying a hamburger at McDonald's: It's quick, it's greasy and then it's over.' And they will say even worse things than that.

I also have looked at the research that was done on buyers in 1913 in Sweden, so in the beginning of the 20th century, just to see. And I can tell you that it's exactly, the results are the same, exactly the same. But what's interesting is, when you do the research and you ask them 'What would stop you from buying somebody,' 'What would be an effective deterrent for you not to use somebody in prostitution,' and they will say the same thing. All of them have said the same thing. About 80% of everyone in this research say 'There's two things that will stop us: number 1 is legislation that prohibits the purchase of a sexual service, and the second one is public shaming,' so having your photo with name and a paper on a billboard, on a poster, whatever. And so I think we agree. We think that the law works, and they tell us that the law would work. No surprise there.

Now, I'll take the police investigations in questions instead of, but what I would like to do is just outline what I think is important to do if you want to change a culture of prostitution to a culture, as we said, kind of like a PR slogan that no one should be for sale in Sweden, nobody should be able to purchase somebody. Of course we have not succeeded with that. And, see, I hope you understand that a change in attitudes and a change in law and all of that, you don't do that 100% in twelve and a half years. But what we have done, and what is incredibly important when you work on, well, any political change that you want to do, is that you have a vision of an ultimate goal of where you want to go. And that vision of course, so if its poverty, we want to end poverty, then you have to, whatever you do to get that goal, have to be on a continuum and be connected to each other. And so in the world right now, when it comes to prostitution, there are two different political visions, if you like: There is the knee-level vision that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world,

And then always asking who wrote the book.

Yeah. Exactly. We usually say the oldest profession was probably midwives, you know, not, or pimp possibly, but not women in prostitution. They say it's the oldest profession in the world, men cannot control their sexuality; as he says, we need, I've had, in many conferences in some countries, men have stood up and said the same thing as the letter-writer; they say to me 'Look, Ms. Ekberg, what are we going to do if we can't go to women in prostitution?' And I usually say 'You take it in your own hands.' Quite a funny, it's,

It's literal.

It's not that. But what I'm saying with that, and what usually happens when we get there, is that we start talking about the myths about male sexuality. And there are groups in Sweden, groups of men in Sweden now who are actually willing to talk about male sexuality and all of the ideas that they will explode or whatever's going to happen if they don't get, as this letter-writer says, this possibility. That's not true. That is a socially constructed idea about male sexuality, which is something you have to start talking about eventually when you talk about this.

But the political vision is, for them, is that you have to reduce the harm in prostitution, and you do that different ways, by, as I said, harm reduction things for women in prostitution, setting up brothels, whatever they can think of. Of course that doesn't reduce the harm; that just contains the harm, because the harm is the act of prostitution; it's the violence. And then you have what we call, and we do that, and that is the international human-rights analysis of prostitution, where it's actually a possibility as a vision to end prostitution and actually to have the view that women and men and young boys and girls have a right to live without being exploited through prostitution, as we have a right to not be subjected to other forms of violence.

So you have to discuss the vision, because if you say nothing about that, you're going to have a patchwork of different initiatives that actually would lead you in the wrong direction. So harm reduction does not, because if you talk about harm reduction, the best harm reduction is of course to remove the buyers. But it's not part of those harm reduction problems.

It has to be made a political priority to work on these issues, as is violence against women of other forms. So it needs to be understood in a society that all of the ones who are responsible for this work, so the police, the health authorities, the social-welfare departments, funding for NGOs, that has to be made a political priority. And it can be. It doesn't mean that you put other political priorities aside.

Remember, even though there are many women and men in prostitution, it is still not a humongous amount of people; and especially if you have this law, that will be many less. So it's not that it's going to take half of the state budget to do this, which it seems like some countries think that that would be necessary.

It's important, when we look at the enforcement of this kind of legislation is that you train the police, not just in investigation but in changes of attitudes. And we had, I mean, we had all kinds of, not so funny then, but funny situations in the Swedish police where police officers identified themselves with the arrested buyers and felt extremely sorry for these men and gave suggestions to them that the letter about that they had committed a crime should not be sent to their home address, because then the wife would find out; it should be, didn't they have a post-office box, or 'Maybe could we send it to your work?' No. Yeah. And also change your attitudes in terms of those who are victims of prostitution. But these are victims. They are crime victims. They should be treated like other crime victims. They have the same rights. They have a right to have their case taken to court. The perpetrator should be investigated and prosecuted. They have a right to compensation for the harm that they have lived through. Etc. etc.

And we don't actually, when I was in the government, we gave money to the police, heaps of money, earmarked, never done that before, for two things: for the changes-of-attitudes training, and money for the investigations, because sometimes these cases can be quite resource-heavy, they need to be, because in our view, if you investigate, it's not just stopping men from buying but it's actually using information that the men have about how they got in contact with the pimps, because of course if you follow the buyer, as the Stockholm Police would say, 'They're pretty stupid. If they can find the pimps, so can we. If we follow their trails, we will get to the pimp,' because the buyers know much more; they're the one, it also alleviates the burden of the women when you have pimping or, sorry, procuring or trafficking cases. So the story and the evidence coming from the women's stories can be corroborated with the information that you get from the buyers, and they know more usually. So we put money into that, and the city government put also a heap of money into it. So for about 7 years now, the police have had this special money to do these investigations, to train their police officers on all levels. And the report from the Swedish National Police just was published a month ago; it's only in Swedish, but I'd be happy, I see I have a police officer, if you want to talk to me about it, I'd be happy to do that later, or get you contacts in the Swedish Police.

And of course then you have to have a public debate. But you don't have to have the, just as somebody said here, you don't have to have the public debate already before you put the law into place, because the law functions as, and I can tell you that you may think that most of the public think that prostitution is okay, but that's not the truth, because most people understand that being in prostitution is not a fun thing. And so if you went out on the streets here and you asked people, just you walk by, 'What do you think about when I say the word "prostitution",' most people will not say it's women who make tons of money and it's a lovely profession. They will say generally that it's individuals who have had a difficult life, who are in prostitution, and you can work with that.

Adequately, as I said before, funds, social-services organizations, make sure, in Sweden we have both governments, so through the welfare offices, because that's how our social-welfare system works, that we have the 370 social-welfare victim support services for women, men in prostitution. But we've also, in the women's movement, we have 150 battered-women shelters. And the Association for Battered Women, questions. Yeah, I'll just have one more thing to say. The Battered Women's Association shelters have now made sure that all of the ones who work in the shelters have training on this.

And, finally, it is good to have an independent monitoring mechanism. We have a National Rapporteur; she studies the situation, and she reports once a year. And she gives recommendations what should be done and should not be done.

So, there. Thank you.

Thank you very much. It was fascinating.

תודה רבה לגב' אקברג, זה היה מרתק וחשוב ואנחנו בעיצומו של תהליך מקביל; קידום הצעת החוק במסגרת משרדי הממשלה, משרד המשפטים ומשרדים נוספים ושינוי חברתי שמובל על ידי הארגונים החברתיים, אבל גם על ידי משרדי הממשלה. אני חייבת לומר שמשרדי הממשלה מגויסים לשינוי החברתי, יש בישראל שני מקלטים. אנחנו לא נוכל להרחיב, אבל יש כבר תהליך של הכשרת לבבות וברגע שהתהליך הזה יצא לדרך אנחנו יכולים רק להמשיך ולקדם את הנושא הזה בשני המישורים.

חברת הכנסת מרינה סולודקין רוצה להתייחס ולשאול שאלה. בבקשה.

קודם כל אני רוצה להודות לך, גב' אקברג, על הדיווח שהיה מבריק ומאוד מאוד עמוק ואני חושבת שכולנו היינו בתענוג לשמוע את מה שאמרת. אנחנו נלמד ונשתמש בתוצאות של הניסיון של שבדיה במדינת ישראל, אבל יש לי כמה שאלות. הרבה שנים אני בנושא הזה בגלל שייסדנו את הוועדה הזו לפני 11 שנה, יחד עם חברת הכנסת זהבה גלאון והיינו בכל השלבים. כמו שאת אמרת, היינו בשלבים שאמרו לנו שגם שוטרים לא יכולים לא לעשות את הצרכים שלהם במקומות של זנות, שמענו את זה. זה בשנים הראשונות, 2000. עכשיו יש לנו שינוי דרסטי בכל הנושא של הברחת נשים וסחר בנשים, אבל בנושא הזנות המקורית לא התקדמנו מספיק. אני רוצה לשאול, את נותנת לנו תמונה מאוד מאוד ורודה, השאלות שלי: מה עם זנות בתוך הקהילה של מהגרים בשבדיה? דבר שני, האם יש תופעה של sex-tourism של שבדיה למדינות אחרות. אני מכירה, הגיעו אנשי טלוויזיה מרוסיה ואמרו שיש משלחות משבדיה לעשות sex-tourism ברוסיה. דבר שלישי, כולנו קראנו את הרב מכר של לארסן, The girl with the
dragon tattoo., שלושה ספרים. מהספרים האלה התמונה לא כל כך ורודה בשבדיה. תודה.

אני מייצגת את הארגון 'אישה לאישה', מרכז פמיניסטי חיפה ובזמן האחרון אנחנו ערות להתכתבות מאוד מאסיבית של ארגוני נשים. את מגויסת לכך ואומרת שברגע שיהיה חוק נגד צרכני מין בתשלום, מה יהיה עם הנשים יום למחרת. זאת אומרת שהטענה היא היום שאין מספיק בחוק בישראל דברים לטובת הנשים והפחד והחשש שנשים שוב נופלות בין הכיסאות. ציינת למשל 150 בתי מחסה לנשים, כנראה מקלטים לנשים מוכות. גם כאן יש מקלטים לנשים מוכות, אבל עדיין זה לא פתרון כי אל המקלטים לנשים מוכות לא יכולות להיכנס נשים בזנות. השאלה איך אתם מתמודדים עם תנועות פמיניסטיות ומה באמת הגישות בשבדיה ומה החוק רואה והאם המלה 'אישה' בכלל מוזכרת בחוק הפללת לקוחות מין, ומה לטובת נשים, וכאשר היה חוק, מה באמת חשבו על נשים בזנות, מה חשבו לתת להן למחרת?

ובתרגום, אל תשתמשו בסקס workers, אנחנו לא משתמשות, בתרגום אני כל הזמן שומעת את זה, אני מדברת על נשים בזנות.

אני מהפקולטה למשפטים באוניברסיטת חיפה. אני מלמדת, אני עוסקת בהוראה של משפט ופמיניזם וגם בפעילות שקשורה לשטח ובשנים האחרונות אני פעילה, תומכת במאבק לקידום החקיקה בנושא של הפללת צרכני זנות. אגב אני רוצה לומר לכל אלה שרוצים ידע שלם ומסודר בנושא, אני כתבתי ממש עכשיו מאמר שנועד להניח את הבסיס לדיון, עם כל הטיעונים, כל המידע, כל המחקרים, הדוח השבדי, מה קורה בנורבגיה. אז כדי שאפשר יהיה לנהל דיון מושכל בנושא, יש חומר מסודר בעברית. שלא יגידו עלינו באקדמיה שאנחנו מנותקים בשטח, אז באמת כתבתי את זה למענכם ובראש ובראשונה למען חברי הכנסת.

הדוח התקבל ואנחנו נשמח להפיץ אותו בקרב החברות והחברים בוועדה.

אני כבר הופעתי בעבר בפני הוועדה ודיברתי ואני רוצה להעיר שתי הערות ובאמת לבקש את ההתייחסות שלך. כשאני הפצתי את המאמר לאחרונה והוא עובר ברשתות שונות, התגובה הכי נפוצה שאני מקבלת, וקיבלתי המון תגובות, היא התגובה הזו: 'נו, בשבדיה הם השקיעו 20 שנה בחינוך, אז בואו גם אנחנו נשקיע 20 שנה בחינוך ולמה צריך חקיקה פלילית'. ההתרשמות שלי מהחומרים ודרך אגב יש גם מחקרים חדשים על נורבגיה, מאוד מעניינים, חקיקה חדשה, מראים שלחקיקה פלילית יש אפקט נפרד, נבדל, משמעותי בשינוי עמדות הציבור והייתי רוצה שתרחיבי ותדגישי את הנקודה הזאת, שתפריך את המיתוס הזה שהכשרתם לבבות 20 שנה, שיש משהו משמעותי ביותר שלא ניתן להמעיט בחשיבותו בערך החקיקה הפלילית. זאת הנקודה הראשונה.

הנקודה השנייה היא הנקודה התקציבית והיא מתחברת למה שריטה אמרה. אין ספק, ואני לא רוצה להשמיץ את כנסת ישראל, אבל קל מאוד לקדם חקיקה שאין לה השלכות תקציביות, אבל אני חושבת שברור שהחקיקה הזאת, כדי שהיא תהיה בעלת משמעות והיא תעשה צדק באמת גם עם הקרבנות, שיהיה לה היבט תקציבי ברור מראש, שיוקדש לשני היבטים, בראש ובראשונה לטיפול בנשים בזנות, ואם אנחנו מדברים על הזכות לצאת מזנות, אז בשביל מי---

ומי אמר לך שקל לקדם חקיקה ליברלית בכנסת ישראל?

הנקודה הזו ברורה, אני רק רוצה לחדד. אנחנו לפעמים מתעלמים ממה שכבר נעשה. יש כאן שני מקלטים, אנחנו מדברים על תהליך של הכשרת לבבות, גם אופק נשי וגם סלעית, ולאורך השנה ולאורך הדיונים בהרבה מאוד מקרים אני חווה איזה שהיא התעלמות ממה שנעשה. נכון שצריך להוסיף תקציבים, אבל בתהליך הכשרת הלבבות כבר נעשות פעולות ויש תכניות של טיפול בנשים בזנות. אומרת לי מנהלת הוועדה, במסגרת הרשות לקידום מעמד האישה---

אני מכירה את כל התכניות, אבל עדיין---

לכן אני אומרת שאין ספק שאתם צריכים תקציבים נוספים, ברור לכולנו.

---רב המרחק בין---

נאפשר לגב' אקברג לענות ואולי זה גם ייתן מענה לחלק מהדברים הבאים.

So for your questions, prostitution in immigrant communities is not different treated than prostitution anywhere else. If there is a priority to investigate the crimes and ensure support for those who are in prostitution, everyone should be benefiting from that, obviously. As for sex tourism, yes, of course, Swedish men are sex tourists. But, but, you should remember that when you normalize the idea that women are for sale and sexually available in prostitution, in those countries where that is normalized, and that's usually the countries where the prostitution industry has been given the legal way of selling women, those are the countries that have the most sex tourists, sex tourists about adult women, sex tourists by children. And in our country, yes we have individuals that travel to Thailand or travel to the Baltic countries where they will buy women and also children for prostitution purposes, but the percentage of men who do is much smaller. And if your question was, which I often get, is 'Okay, so all of these men have stopped buying in Sweden. Would they then travel to our neighboring countries to buy men,' and I just want to remind you a little bit how prostitution works. The majority of men who buy something for prostitution purposes, someone for prostitution purposes, will do that between work and going home. They will go to street prostitution, they will buy a blow job or they will have intercourse with somebody a brief period of time, or they may go out with their friends on the weekend and buy somebody. For them to change the behavior and say to their wives 'I'm sorry, I'm going to be gone for two days here. I'm going to go to Denmark,' it is practically impossible.

More complicated.

And so what we saw when the first law came into place was that the occasional buyer, so those who buy when they go back and forth, they will go to Tel Aviv and get the cards and they will ring for somebody, an escort service woman, they won't hop on a bus to Denmark. And they can't go to Norway, because it's criminalized. They can't go to Finland. So it'd have to be to Denmark or to countries further away, and that's far away to go. So it just doesn't work like that.

We had, from the women's movement, we wanted the law to have the same clause as the Norwegian law that came in 2009, and that is that they can also convict Norwegian residents who travel to other countries to buy somebody for prostitution purposes. We can only do that with our law in countries where the law is already in place. So if a Swedish man travels to Norway, he can be convicted in Norway but he can also be, sorry, prosecuted in Norway but also in Sweden. The conservative government that's now in place in Sweden, who was the party that voted against the law in 1999, I want to underline, did not want to extend our law, and we're very angry about that. Just to respond to that.

And for the Millennium trilogy, Stieg Larsson's book about the Millennium trilogy is not an adequate reflection of the most general situation in Sweden. But he did write about some of the measures that we actually put in place. If you look in them, there's some things and there's some situations that he's reflecting in it. So I think it's interesting that way, but I wouldn't use that as an understanding of our society.

Anyway, so a few from Haifa. There you are. Yes, it is important that we make sure that those who are in prostitution have access to adequate social support exit services, but that's important whether or not you have this law in place. So that means that a government has to prioritize to do that. In Sweden, all of the city council have in the law, covers the social welfare of the public in the world. It states clearly that it is the state that has to provide social welfare, whatever it is, to the population when you're in need, and that also encompasses women in prostitution, obviously. I'm sure you have a similar thing in your social-welfare law. It was important for us to give money to exit support services; we already had three big organizations that were working on it when the law came into place. And as I said, the shelters. And the shelters in Sweden are not people who are for salary; they're volunteers. Most of the shelters are volunteers. It's women in the women's movement who run the shelters. But they still, we know, I've run shelters for battered women. There's lots of women in prostitution that come to those shelters now also, but they won't say that they are in prostitution. So it's also up to us, who work in these organizations, to identify those who are in prostitution.

I don't know what else to say. You will never have enough support services for women who are victims of violence; that's the tragic story in all of our countries. We fight for it constantly, more money, more shelters, more long-term facilities. But it has to be part of when you do a whole program of prostitution, of course, and not just have projects, I want to underline; it has to be long-term service facilities. But it's not that expensive, come on. It is prioritizing the budget, and you do that, I mean, I've been in the government for 6 years; we had to fight for every cent within the government. But you can do that. It is a matter of prioritizing where money is put. So it's up to us all to fight for that. But whether or not the law, those women are there anyway. You know, they don't appear out of the woodwork suddenly when the law is in place. And in fact the women I spoke with, when the law just had passed in Sweden, I went and I talked to a number of women in prostitution and their first comment was, from many individuals, that 'This is the first time that the Swedish government takes our situation seriously.' So I think that is important to say. And we cannot not do this law just, and think that women are better off.

I've said it two times. In terms of your question on it takes 20 years, I just want to say that there are detractors of this legislation in the world, and they can be organized in three groups: men who buy women for prostitution purposes don't like this law. No, four groups. Pimps don't like this law. Some academics don't like this law for all kinds of neo-liberal things and reasons. Some women in prostitution don't like this law because they are not allowed to like this law while they're in prostitution, because being in prostitution is as living with a battering husband: You cannot criticize the abuser while you're with him, because he's going to kill you; very simple. And some of them will find all kinds of reasons why this doesn't work. It will not take 20 years in Israel to change the attitudes on people, I can promise you that. We did a campaign that I advised on in the UK, so England and Northern Ireland and Wales, where we changed the law in 2 years. Two years it took. And most of the campaigning and most of the awareness-raising was done by women's organizations. But we managed to change the law three ways: Women are now not criminalized in the sense that they're not put in prison in the UK; they're diverted into social services agencies that are funded. There's a semi, not the best law, but law that prohibits the purchase a women in prostitution if she is controlled by a pimp. And there are measures that make the police be able to close down those activities, like massage parlors and all of those licensed activities that the municipalities put into place but just happen to be brothels, and now the police can close them down immediately. So you can make those changes really quickly. Norway took 10 years, but why did it take 10 years in Norway? Because Norway usually doesn't want to do like Sweden. We have this competition in Scandinavia. I'm really serious.

We don't have that with our neighbors, so you don't see the Israelis guys going to Lebanon to buy sexual,

No, I don't think that's going to happen on that.

Services, so,

Yeah. So I think that that's just a way to detract us from the importance of actually visiblizing the harm and the violence of prostitution.

בבקשה, נמשיך עם השאלות. עורכת דין לבנקרון, בבקשה.

האמת היא שאני מאוד שמחה שקיבלתי את זכות הדיבור אחרי שנאסר עלינו לצאת מהחדר, כי במהלך הביקור שלי בשבדיה בקיץ היו כמה שבדים שברגע שהתחלתי לשאול שאלות מצאו לנכון כן לעזוב את החדר, אז במובן מסוים אני שמחה שאנחנו כולנו כלואות כאן באווירה פמיניסטית זו.

רציתי לשאול כמה שאלות קונקרטיות לגבי המצב בשבדיה. השאלה הראשונה, איך מונעים פגיעה בנשים, פגיעה בשני היבטים; אם את חושבת שזנות היא עבודה, אני מבינה שהעמדה הזאת לא מקובלת בשבדיה, אבל נשים שעמן שוחחתי מדברות על תחושה מאוד קשה של השפלה, גם ברגע ששוטר פורץ לחדר ומנסה להציל אותך כשאת לא רוצה להיות ניצולה, וגם כשמשתיקים אותך בשיח הפוליטי, הציבורי והמשפטי.

שאלה שנייה היא לגבי מס הכנסה. אם החוק הפלילי רואה באישה קורבן למה מס הכנסה עדיין במקרים מסוימים -זה מופעל לעתים רחוקות יחסית אבל זה קיים- מצפה ממנה לשלם מס?

שאלה שלישית בעניין התקציבים. אני מסכימה איתך לגבי הקושי העצום בתקציבים בכל מה שקשור לבעיות של נשים ברוב המדינות, ועדיין. ב-1999, כששבדיה מחוקקת את החוק, אנחנו מדברים על 3,000 נשים לפי הערכות שבדיות שעוסקות בזנות, התקציב שעד היום אנחנו מדברים עליו הוא של כמה עשרות מיליוני קרונות. כשאנחנו מסתכלים על מקלטים לנשים מוכות ועל עברות מין, התקציב הממשלתי הוא אפסי כמעט ויש ביקורת מאוד קשה, בין השאר של דוח אמנסטי, של ארגוני נשים שבדיים ופגשתי את הארגונים שמפעילים את המקלטים, הם מפעילים את הכל מתרומות ובהתנדבות.

I didn't get that.

מדוע מקציבים עשרות מיליוני קרונות למשהו ש-3,000 נשים, לפי הערכות שבדיות, מעורבות בו, כשיש מאות אלפים שסובלות מעברות מין, מאלימות במשפחה ושבדיה להם לא דואגת.

ויש לי עוד שתי שאלות ובזאת אני מסיימת.

אני חושבת שנתמקד בהצעת החוק.

אני מתמקדת לחלוטין בהצעת החוק.

אנחנו לא יכולות לנתח את התקציב השבדי.

נכון, אבל בכל זאת. הטענה היא שסוחרים נרתעים בגלל החוק החדש, אבל כשאני מסתכלת על הזהות של הלקוחות, ובאמת רק על השנים האחרונות, מצאתי לפחות שלושה שופטים שעברו על החוק, אחד מהם היה שופט בית המשפט העליון, שר התעסוקה, הקצין שהיה ממונה על אכיפת החוק, הוגש נגדו כתב אישום ולא רק על צריכת זנות, הוא גם אנס וגם סרסר, וזה עוד לפני שהגענו לכל הרכילויות והספרים שמתפרסמים על מה שעושה המלך, כך שאם אני הייתי סוחרת נשים, שבדיה היתה נראית לי בהחלט יעד משתלם.

השאלה האחרונה לגבי הוועדה. לוועדה בראשות השופטת העליונה, שאני מאוד מכבדת את עבודתה אבל מלכתחילה היא יצאה לדרך במנדט מאוד חלקי ובעייתי, לא הרשו, בפירוש אני אומרת, 'לא הרשו לה', כמו שאני אומרת לילדים שלי 'אני לא מרשה', לא הרשו לה לשקול בכלל את הנושא של ביטול החוק, אמרו לה 'את יכולה להציע שיפורים'. כך שאני חושבת שכשמגבילים משפטית ואקדמית בכזאת צורה, אי אפשר לצפות לתוצאות אחרות. בין השאר הדנים, למשל, טוענים שאם חל אצלם גידול בזנות בשנים האחרונות זה בגלל שנשים שבדיות מהגרות לשטחם כדי לברוח מהחוק השבדי.

וגם לגבי האינטרנט, אני סקרנית לדעת מה המתודולוגיה, כי זה לא רק אתרים שכתוב עליהן 'נשים'---

עורכת דין לבנקורן, אנחנו לא נוכל להרחיב לכל כך הרבה שאלות.

בזאת סיימתי לחלוטין.

I'd be happy to answer those in a very short, prostitution is not working in Sweden and it's violence. Of course, prostitution cannot be working in Sweden, and you know that very well. I've underlined a number of times that prostitution is seen as violence. We do have detractors. And I can see that you've thoroughly read a brief that's been written by somebody who is actually connected with the industry, which is always interesting to see.

Income tax, no. There's been, there was an attempt in 2005 of a woman, who has been in prostitution a long time, to get taxed because she wanted to make a point that women should be able to work in prostitution. And at that time, and I was in the government, we made it explicitly clear that the tax authorities are not allowed to tax women because they're in prostitution, because they're victims.

יש לי תשובה מרשויות המס השבדיות שהן חושבות הפוך.

עורכת דין לבנקורן, בואי נאפשר לגב' אקברג לענות ולא נהפוך את זה לפינג פונג של שאלות ודיון.

Yeah, it's a lot different, but I'm telling you from my point of view, okay, and then you can absorb that with what you have. Yes. And I think it's interesting, actually. Thanks for mentioning the judges, because it's one thing that I forgot to talk about, which is one really important effect of the law that we didn't think about, and that is that men in high power positions in most countries are not touched even if they commit different acts of violence, if they're batterers or they're rapists. And one example is of course Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who now has been arrested for rape. But in general, men in positions of political power or private power in corporations can and are arrogant enough sometimes that they will do things that generally is illegal. And what has been so interesting in Sweden is that a number of men in high positions have actually both been prosecuted and convicted under the law, including Leif Thorsson, who was a judge on the Supreme Court and who bought a young man for prostitution purposes. A police chief in Uppsala, who was quite well-known, who was convicted both for buying a sexual service but also facilitating prostitution for other men in high position, he's in prison for 6 years. The former minister for labor in the conservative government had to step down last year during the election campaign because he was suspected of having bought somebody for prostitution purposes. And I can list. There were religious leaders, sports, important footballers and so forth. And that I think is one of the most interesting effects, because these men are usually never investigated. But because the police and the prosecutors and the judges take their jobs seriously, these men can no longer trust that they are scot-free when it comes to this law. And we are very happy, because of course men in positions buy women; we know that. But this time there's a serious deterrence. This is just like the last two years that the police actually have gone to the … Sweden to investigate and prosecute one of their own, and that does not happen in most other countries. So thank you for underlining that one.

And about not being allowed to having opinions about whether the law worked or not, that's simply not true. It says in the directives for the commission that they would like the law to continue, but an independent inquiry can issue any opinion they like, as is part of a parliamentary democratic society in most countries. It is not, the government cannot control a special inquiry. That would be undemocratic. The rest we'll leave aside.

Okay, please, we have another question.

יש לי שתי שאלות מאוד קצרות. השאלה הראשונה היא כזאת, איך החוק מתמודד עם תופעות של תעשיית מין בבתים, בדירות או שוגר דדי? זה נראה כאילו שהחוק בא להתמודד עם זנות ברחוב.

השאלה השנייה נוגעת לחברה השבדית בעקבות החקיקה. נראה שלכאורה תעשיית המין והזנות עברה לארצות השכנות. יכול להיות שהנתונים בשבדיה ירדו, אבל נראה שגם הנשים וגם צורכי שירותי מין מהגרים לארצות השכנות על מנת בעצם לממש את זממם.

אני מהסנגוריה הציבורית בישראל. העמדה העקרונית שלנו היא שאנחנו מאוד מסויגים מהצעת החוק הזאת ואחד הטיעונים הפרגמטיים הוא שאנחנו חושבים שיש קשר או אנלוגיה בין אכיפה של מדיניות נגד סמים לבין החוק שמוצע כאן ואפשר לחשוב על האנלוגיה בכל מיני דרכים ואנחנו אומרים את זה כבר שנתיים. כשמסתכלים על אכיפה של מדיניות נגד סמים, אחת הטענות שקיבלה לאחרונה ביטוי מאוד חזק מהאו"ם זה שבאכיפה הזאת אולי יש איזה שהם יתרונות אבל החסרונות שלה, הבעיות החברתיות שהיא יוצרת בתום מאה שנים של אכיפה, הן גדולות יותר מיתרונות ובכלל ספק עד כמה אכיפה חזקה וחדה ככל שתהיה באמת מצליחה להשפיע על התופעה של שימוש בסמים. אז השאלה היא קודם כל בכלל מה דעתך לגבי הרעיון הזה והאם מדוח האו"ם שיצא לאחרונה, שמדבר או ממליץ, כמובן זה תהליך ארוך, לדה-קרימינליזציה של סמים, אפשר ללמוד דברים שקשורים לסוג הזה של החקיקה?

עוד שאלה ואנחנו נסגור עם השאלה הזאת.

מעניין אותי מאוד לשמוע, אחרי עשור שהחוק קיים, מה ההשפעה בערכים של החברה, מדובר על החינוך של הנוער והצעירים, אם היו מחקרים על מה התפיסה של אנשים לגבי זנות, האם זה משתנה אחרי 15-10 שנים, שאנשים תופסים את זה כדבר פחות לגיטימי, אותו דבר, האם זה משתנה באמת? האם המאבק של הרשויות נגד התופעה נחלש, שאנשים תופסים את הרעיון ורצים איתו או שזה פשוט נשאר באותו מצב ותמיד צריך להמשיך עם האכיפה והמלחמה נגד הקרימינלים?

Now I have to answer, because I can only handle about three questions at once; otherwise my brain cells,

It was the last question, so,

Okay. Yeah. So you asked me about apartment, prostitution, indoor prostitution. Yes. Most of the investigation, we don't have very many individuals who are in street prostitution at all anymore. So I would say 90% of the investigations of the police is in indoor prostitution and illegal brothels. And we've had, I'd be happy to give you the numbers, which are, I have actually the numbers of the cases of, last year, for example, we had 120 cases of procuring that went to court. We had 16 cases this year on trafficking for sexual exploitation. And we had trafficking for other purposes this year, 18. And so that, and I'm using those numbers to let you know that the police know where all of the activities take place; that's not the problem. The problem is to have resources to investigate. And it's very, it's not, prostitution cannot exist underground, and I want to underline that for everybody who thinks that it can. For being able to sell a woman for prostitution purposes, the pimp or the woman herself must be in contact with the buyer. It's the buyer who pays, and that is where you get the profit. If you don't have a buyer, you have no … The police investigate the buyers. And so the Swedish police, in their investigations, they will follow the trail of the buyers. So, for example, we have a special unit of the police that does only Internet investigations of prostitution trafficking, and also there's another unit that does, on child pornography. And a lot of information that's generated from their investigations are used to initiate police investigations. And we use the information, see, the buyers are the in for everybody, into the industry. So we use the buyers and their testimony to get to the networks, because we want to stop the networks, of course.

How many people work in this unit?

There's different, different police districts have different size units. But we have is that they're, the police,

But in Israel we have only 17 investigators or 12,

Yeah, yeah, that's not enough.

For Internet crimes,

But we did an interesting thing, just to add to that, is that,

All over Israel.

We did that. The national police, where a lot of the knowledge to investigate these things, was given money to do two things, as I said: training, but the police districts, and we have 21 police districts, they could apply, I mean, they can still apply, for money, for resources, both for resources for the investigations but they can also invite investigators from the national police to a local police district, if they have cases where they investigate in procuring and trafficking, and that is not very expensive. I just want to say that that worked really well, because not only the police districts can have up-to-date investigative technique information because they have so few cases, but when there is a case, both the information goes to the district and people will come and assist in the investigation. So it does, and that's, you save a lot of money doing that, actually. And I can talk to you if you want to know more about that.

But so, and your other question was if the prostitution businesses went to other countries. Well, of course they did when we got this law. That's what's so interesting. Let me give Norway as an example. Don't, I will say the whole thing. Norway, when they put their law into place, 50% of the pimps left the country within the first few weeks, and they went to Denmark. What does that tell us? That tells us that the law works as a barrier for the establishment and continuation of prostitution activities. And the solution to it would be to have the same law in all countries. This is the same discussion as we had in the European Union on money laundering. Same arguments were used saying, and there was two countries who did not want to have legislation on money laundering. So of course all of the organized crime networks went to those two countries and laundered their money. That's how law works. It's good. It shows us that it's effective and it shows us that in Denmark they need to have the law. And also right when this happened, for the first time the Danish Police contacted the Swedish Police to 'Maybe could we have some training on how to look at, how to get to the buyers.' So it's really important. I mean, it's lots of legislation. That's how it works. You minimize the crimes, and the criminals would go somewhere else. But that tells us something. And those countries will then have to be responsible to change the laws there. So that was that question.

I have to say for you, from the public defense, that I don't really, I can't answer your question, because I don't draw parallels between prostitution and drugs, other than that organized crime networks may be involved both in prostitution and drugs. As for the arguments in terms of the decriminalization of drugs in the US, personally I think that's absolutely outrageous that they have come to that conclusion. And that tells us that there is some powers that want that to happen. But that has nothing to do with what we're trying to do. We're working on a different area. We're talking about, this is a combination of women's rights, seeing prostitution as violence, and targeting those who are the perpetrators. If you want to, you can parallel, you can parallel any crimes with that, because there's always a perpetrator who's always a victim, and there might be something that is exchanged. But I think that is a, it's a comparison that limps.

I'd be happy to talk to you. The prosecutors in Sweden were extremely against the law when it came; they had all kinds of problems with it in terms of evidence and things like that. But they also have changed completely their mind and opened their mind to how this law, see, in the procuring and trafficking cases, the prosecutors will use the testimony of the buyers; they will try the buyers in the same trial as they try the pimps and the traffickers, one, as an educational thing to show the buyers that they're part of the organized crime, that they are the reason, but also the testimony that the buyers give is very helpful for prosecuting the cases. I'd be happy to give you contacts with the Swedish International Chamber that works on these cases, and you talk to them yourselves if you like.

Enforcement. I think we've already, you were talking about attitudes. I think I've already mentioned that, but I'll just underline it again that the support for the law, from the public, has been consistently the same, between 70 and 80%, since it came into place. And as for the buyers, the men who buy, it has halved. The percentage, so it's gone from 13.6% of men who've bought to 7.8. And I think that that is as close as we can come to support. And you have to remember that we are in a very different situation today than we were when the law came into place, because the international, the global prostitution industry knows that when this law comes into place, their profit will go out the window, they will not make money. And so, for example, when Finland was having their discussion whether or not to have this legislation, there was a majority in the parliament until a couple of weeks before they were going to vote, because in the law committee that was doing the consultations on the law, suddenly out of thin air appeared two organizations that were calling themselves sex-worker organizations. No one had heard of them before. Fifteen young women from Estonia were testifying to the committee, saying that they liked to be in prostitution in Helsinki, that they made more money than they would in Tallinn. They were all between 18 and 25. They were not there on their own volition. There were pressures, obviously, from those who would profit, or trying to profit off of selling the women. And they knew that if this law came into place in Finland, then they would be out of business.

So don't think that this is a pure discussion. You have to ask yourself who is speaking. I mean, you can ask about me, who am I, what's my background, what reason do I have to support this. And you can come to the governments too, except I don't work for the government anymore, and I was part of the women's movement from the '70s, pushing for the law. But you also have to ask those who ask questions and who say that prostitution is a profession or it's sex work, who are they. I was part of this Demand Change! campaign in the UK; it's online, by the way, so you can look at it. Suddenly there was an organization that was also a sex-worker organization, but we didn't believe that. So journalists investigated their backgrounds, and what were they? They were escort service agency owners.

Toda raba. Thank you very much.

That's by a pimp in Newcastle Upon Tyne. So don't, you know, you have to be careful with,

שאלה נקודתית. אני מנהלת מקלט לנשים קרבנות סחר. יש לי שאלה, האם שירותי שיקום ניתנים רק לנשים אזרחיות שבדיה, מה משך הזמן במקרה הזה ומה קורה בדרך כלל עם רוב הנשים, האם הן נשארות בשבדיה או חוזרות למדינות המקור?

I'm sorry, I'm a little bit tired because I've been speaking for the last, last Monday I started in Belgium and I spoke in the Belgium parliament, the European parliament. I've spoken here. I'm a little bit tired. So if I don't sound cohesive all the time, don't worry about it.

Yes, of course there are women who are victims of trafficking across borders into Sweden. We have residents' permits that can be applied for these women, and it gets applied, sorry, the application for the residents, or the temporary visa rather, is done as soon as we find those women. Then they have access to the same medical, social services, whatever, employment services, as the Swedish citizens, during the time of the trial and appeals and so forth. Most women, because most women who are victims in Sweden come from countries within the European Union, so they don't need a temporary visa when this goes on. They have a right to stay in Sweden. So it's a bit different in your case. Any European Union citizen can stay 3 months without a problem, in a country. So they are not, they don't have to be under the scheme. We have the possibility for the women to apply for long-term, or a permanent visa in Sweden to stay, and women have about, I think we have about 30 women who have applied for that. 99% of the women testify in Sweden, which is very different numbers than in other countries, and I think that is because our police and social workers are actually very good at meeting with the women. So they are willing to stay and testify. However, most women don't want to stay in Sweden. And we've, I mean, we've fought, from the women's movement, to give permanent visas to everyone, but a lot of women have children at home or they want to go home to whatever country they come from. And when I was in the government, we decided that Sweden had a responsibility for those women that went home, because they went to countries where there were no social services, that's why they left in the first place, where women who come back will be very poor. So we did a pilot project with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania where we gave money to build shelters in these three countries, the Nordic countries, so that there would be, and ensure that women from the women's movement actually worked in those shelters. So at least we had somewhere where the women could return.

Women, and I want to add this, women who are complainants in procuring and trafficking cases automatically are assigned a legal advocate who is a lawyer, and that lawyer is responsible to ensure that she gets compensation. So there's a request to the court for compensation. But he or she is also required to ensure that the woman has a decent place to live; if there's shelter or if she doesn't live in shelter depends on her situation. If the woman, if there's not enough evidence in court to say that this particular woman can be given compensation, because sometimes there are a number of women and not all of them we can link the woman with the perpetrator. Then the legal advocate has to ensure that there's an application made to the Crime Compensation Board, which is a public authority that can give compensations to victims of crimes where the perpetrator is not identified but there's still a level of evidence to show that she's been a victim of a crime.

So I think I even wrote it here, I can't remember. But the majority of the victims have been given compensation. What we were concerned about when I was in the government was that, when women return to other countries, the risk was that somebody else took the money, boyfriend, pimp, whatever. So we've also tried to set up systems so that nobody else can access the funds upon return. And the Crime Compensation Board did a study that I do mention here, just 2 years, a year ago, 2 years ago, to see what had happened, and most of the women had been able to keep their money.

עורכת דין רחל גרשוני, מתאמת המאבק בסחר בנשים, התייחסות קצרה. בבקשה.

This isn't something you're going to be able to answer in 2 seconds, so I just wanted to raise it. I have a big dilemma here. Given that at this moment the Israeli public does not have the consensus on this issue that prostitution is violence, okay, my question is, is this the moment to legislate? And, again, should we wait a while? First, practically, because we did some research on criminal law for social change, for example, Prohibition in the United States, which in a way failed because they didn't engage the whole of the society and it was a very limited group of women. And on the other hand, what very much succeeded here in Israel, even though it's a very different subject, is forbidding smoking in public places, which was done in a very gradual way, okay? So you can say it's a very different thing. Practically, should we wait a while? And the second thing is, fundamentally, what is the purpose of the criminal law? Is the purpose of the criminal law to educate? And I go on; is the purpose of the criminal law to educate, or should it be the last step when at least some consensus has been reached, and only then you use this very extreme tool of criminal law? Questions which have no real, one answer.

No, but I can give some hints at what I think. If we look at other forms of violence against women, I assume you have legislation that would criminalize batterers, right? I also assume that when that legislation came into place, not everyone agreed that that would happen.

Well, you know,

Not, the batterers wouldn't.

Criminal,

And sexual harassment.

Let me,

We can take sexual harassment, for example,

Depending on which legislation,

12 years ago. The majority of the guys thought that,

Yeah, so sexual harassment legislation, that's a good example, because that's very difficult to get consensus in a society. But you still have that law. We can take other laws that don't affect women, that we put into place because we want change to happen. If we look at violence against women and the changing behavior of men who are violent, we know from tons of studies and experiences that awareness-raising is not enough to make men stop sexually harassing or make men stop rape or make men stop battering their wives. It's important with awareness-raising to change attitudes, and that's something, that's an ongoing project; that's not something you do all along. But, I mean, when we talk about or do awareness-raising within the women's movement, we may do it on the changing of behaviors of men when it comes to violence, and prostitution is added to that. Do you see what I mean? It's not a separate subject.

I think that laws, I'm a lawyer, laws are, we use laws when we know that there is a certain behavior in society that is harmful to people and we want that behavior to stop, but we do it in connection with awareness-raising. You can continue in awareness-raising till the cows come home, and you're still going to have this behavior to go on. But if, as the men themselves say, and I think that in this case we can let them talk, the men who bought, they know that if there's a law, that will change their behavior. And we're interested in that behavior change. Then when the law is in place, then we can work on those who actually are buyers or who are wife-beaters or rapists, and try and change their attitudes. But the law needs to be there to show the seriousness of this crime, and specifically in prostitution it's not seen as anything that's seriously harmful to women. It is defined as all kinds of other ways. And so we can't just push the law later on. The law, a parallel example that I think is better than the drugs example of the prosecution office here is the law that we got in 1977 on prohibition of punishing, corporal punishment on children. That was put into place against violent protests in the community, but there was an understanding that we wanted a society where children were not to be penalized and not beaten up by their parents, because in our country it was important that children had rights and that there are other ways of changing behaviors of children. Three, sorry, two prosecutions we've had under this law, because it's not been necessary. There was a parallel awareness-raising. There was the law. The law is there and it is used, if we don't use other child neglect and whatever.

So laws are both normative and direct, and all laws are like that. They tell us, I mean, if we still believe in a society that's based on community and not about parallel living individuals, which seems to be the case in many, then we have to take responsibility this way, I think. And you can push it forward ahead of you. It's not going to make a difference, but it's important to start to do the awareness-raising so every time somebody mentions the word "prostitution", you just automatically say 'What about the buyers?' That changes attitudes in 2 seconds sometimes, because a lot of people haven't even thought about the men.

The basic attitude that's in dissension here on discussion: Is prostitution violence against women? This is the basic issue, and this is what people don't agree on.

I know that, but that is up to you and to us and to the NGOs and the politicians to explain why it's violence against women. And I can give you three questions very quickly how you analyze that. You ask yourselves who is it that's in prostitution; you know that; it's marginalized people. You ask yourself what individuals in prostitution actually experience, what happens in prostitution; and we know that. I can, you know, the prostitution act is what is prostitution, what men do in terms of penetrate and touching, sexually harassing, torturing and all of that. That's what happens in prostitution. And women in prostitution will not talk about the building they're in, like those who want to legalize. They will talk about the violence that's committed against them. If we can describe that, if we can describe the consequences of having been in prostitution for the individual who is in prostitution but also the effects on all of us, as I started out, the status of women in a society is linked to how we deal with prostitution, because if some women can be objectified and sexualized, everyone can. It's just luck if you happen to be not in prostitution. It's not born into prostitution. Women are not wanting to be in prostitution. It is because they have been harmed in one way or another and somebody preyed on them. So I think that you do that education, and that can be done quite quickly.

I also suggest that you don't waste too much fighting about whether prostitution is work or choice, but you work with the people who are willing to think it through, because that's the basis of change, those who are willing to think about it. There's always loudmouths in a society who would be arguing about the choice and the work and the profession, and they can do that but, I mean, the real work is to be done with the people in the community, and they get it. So I'm not so worrying about that.

תודה רבה לגב' אקברג על הסקירה המעמיקה והחשובה, על הארת נקודות מבט וסוגיות שבשיח הישראלי שנויות עדיין במחלוקת, גם לגבי היישום של החוק השבדי. כשהגעת הנה והארת את עינינו והצגת בפנינו את מה שקורה בשבדיה, אני חושבת שהתמונה הזו והמציאות הזו יכולה לסייע לנו לקדם את החוק בישראל ולהתאים אותו. אני רוצה לחדד, הצעת החוק שמונחת היום על שולחנה של הכנסת לא מדברת רק על הפללת לקוחות אלא גם על טיפול בקהילה, ואת החלק של טיפול בקהילה, שהוא חלופה למאסר, נוטים לדחוק הצידה. המטרה היא לא להכניס גברים לבתי הסוהר אלא להביא לשינוי חברתי מיוחל, שינוי בנקודת המבט, שינוי בתרבות ובהתייחסות לזנות בישראל.

העבודה שלנו בוועדה היא חלק מעבודה מערכתית כוללת עם משרדי הממשלה ועם הארגונים החברתיים, ושיתוף הפעולה הוא אחד הגורמים המרכזיים להצלחה.

אני חייבת לציין שלפני מספר חודשים עבר חוק איסור פרסום מודעות שמציעות שירותי מין וכבר ננקטות פעולות כנגד המפרסמים. היה לנו אתר אינטרנט, yad2, שפנינו בקשר אליו לשר המשפטים ולשר לביטחון פנים. לצד מודעות שמציעות דירות ומכוניות ב-yad2 היו גם נשים עם פירוט מאוד רחב על איזה שירותים תקבל וכמה זה יעלה לך. הציר השני זה תביעה ייצוגית שהונחה לפני כשבוע נגד אחד העיתונים המרכזיים במדינת ישראל על פרסום מודעות, וההתייחסות היא לא רק לרגשות הציבור שנחשף לזה, אלא גם לקרבנות שעומדות מאחורי המודעה.

יש כאן עוד שתי הצעות חוק שנמצאות אצלנו בקנה, אחת זה סגירה מנהלית ל-90 יום של בתי בושת. זו פנייה של משטרת ישראל אחרי סיור באילת מבחינת סוגיית הסחר בנשים. זה בא מתוך המשטרה כצורך. כרגע זה עומד על 30 יום, הם צריכים 90 יום כדי להעמיק חקירות. ההצעה הנוספת היא שבהליך רישוי עסקים מכוני בריאות, עיסוי וספא יצטרכו לקבל אישור משטרה. נכון להיום רק חלק מבעלי העסקים או מהעסקים בישראל צריכים לקבל אישור של המשטרה ובדרך כלל אלה עסקים שיש איזה שהיא הפרעה לציבור או התייחסות לחוק, ואנחנו מבקשים להכניס גם את מכוני העיסוי, הבריאות והספא שלפעמים מהווים כסות לניצול נשים לזנות. אגב, קיבלנו הרבה מאוד ברכות על הנחת החוק, דווקא מהמטפלים האלטרנטיביים ששיתפו אותנו בפניות מאוד מאוד קשות שהם מקבלים, כשהרעיון המרכזי שעומד מאחורי הפניות זה באמת שירותי זנות, והם אמרו 'תסדירו את זה, בבקשה, אנחנו מוכנים לגשת למשטרה ולקבל היתרים'.

השלב הבא הוא חשיבה נוספת, ברמה של ועדת שרים ומשרדי הממשלה, והנוכחות שלך מאוד משמעותית בחוות הדעת של המשרד לביטחון פנים, משרד המשפטים והמשרדים הנוספים, לתמיכה בהצעת החוק. כמובן אם תהיינה הסתייגויות, אנחנו נשמח לשמוע.

אין ספק שאנחנו צריכים להמשיך להתוות מדיניות של סדר עדיפויות וטיפול ארוך טווח ולא רק טיפול נקודתי בסוגיה ותמיכה גם במערכת הרווחה, גם במערכת הבריאות וגם במערכת התעסוקה בישראל שיכולה להוות אלטרנטיבה לנשים בזנות. זה לא רק למגר את תופעת הזנות אלא גם להוות אלטרנטיבה.

התייחסות אחרונה ללגיטימציה לזנות בחסות הדת. אני תמיד חוזרת ואומרת שגם ביהדות, גם בנצרות וגם באיסלם יש לגיטימציה לזנות וכשאני שואלת מי כתב את הספר, אני קוראת את הטקסטים הדתיים בקריאה ביקורתית. באיסלם זה בחסות הקוראן, יש נישואי מוטעה, שזה נישואי תענוג של אנשי הדת שיכולים להינשא למישהי לשעה, זה נקרא נישואי התענוג, הוא משלם לה עבור הנישואים האלה ואחרי שעה הוא מגרש אותה וזה לגיטימי ובחסות הדת. מדובר פה במאבקי כוח ובמי מחזיק את הכוח ומי מחזיק את הכסף ואיך הוא משתמש בכוח ובכסף כדי לכפות את עמדותיו ודעותיו על כלל הציבור ולהביא אותנו למקום שבו אנחנו שואלות את עצמנו שאלה, האם הציבור בשל או לא בשל. כל עוד הכסף והכוח נמצאים במקום שקובע את סדר היום ומשפיע על דעת הקהל, אנחנו נהיה בדעת מיעוט ונידחק, לכן אנחנו לא צריכות לפחד או להיזהר במקומות האלה וקצת יותר להעז. גם במקרה של פרסום מודעות שמציעות שירותי מין, היו כאן אתגרים שעמדנו בהם, בעיקר כשדובר על לא להפליל את המפרסמות, שמסתבר שאלה שמפרסמים הם בעצם הסרסורים. הצלחנו באיסור פרסום מודעות ואנחנו מקווים גם להצליח בהפללת לקוחות וטיפול בקהילה. המטרה שלנו ליצור שינוי חברתי לטווח ארוך.

תודה רבה לכולם, על המשך הדיונים תקבלו הודעה, הישיבה נעולה.

הישיבה ננעלה בשעה 11:45