Photo by Hydra's Peers.
Germany legalised sex work in 2002. While official statistics from the Federal Crime Office suggest that this decision has resulted in an overall decrease of human trafficking, German critics of the 2002 law contend that it has instead had a negative effect. In 2013, Alice Schwarzer, an anti-sex work activist, was instrumental in convincing the Christian Democratic Party (CDU), Germany’s biggest party, that new legislation on sex work was required to combat trafficking. For two years, the German Ministry for Women, Seniors, Youth and the Family negotiated the new law in an attempt to bridge the divide between a repressive approach favoured by the CDU and the rights-based approach of the Social Democrats.
