In 1999, Sweden introduced groundbreaking law, the first country to criminalize the john rather than punish the prostitute. Gunilla Ekberg, the Swedish government’s lead official on prostitution, described the model as looking at prostitution as a form of male sexual violence, noting her country’s law focuses “…on the root cause, the recognition that without men’s demand for and use of women and girls for sexual exploitation, the global prostitution industry would not…flourish and expand.”
Other countries have since adopted that Nordic Model: Norway in 2008, Iceland in 2009, Canada in 2014 and Northern Ireland in 2015, not long after the European parliament approved a resolution calling for the law to be adopted throughout the continent. In April 2016, the French Parliament also adopted such legislation. TFHT lauds France’s government for stepping up and doing the right thing, yet another country reinforcing the message that societies need to reach out to prostituted people as victims and not treat them as social pariahs.
