Labour party advocates making sexual harassment on the street a punishable offense

PvdA parliamentarian Ahmed Marcouch wants to make sexual harassment on the street a punishable offense. If he has his way, anyone who cat calls, whistles, chases or in anyway sexually harasses another person on the street, will spend up to three months in jail or pay a hefty fine, ANP reports.

Marcouch submitted his proposal to add street sexual harassment in the Criminal Code. According to him, it should not be up to the victims to take a self-defense course or grow a thicker skin. It should the perpetrators that should be prosecuted and punished. He wants sexual harassment on the street to be classified as an offense, not a crime. It is easier to prove an offense.

According to the PvdA MP, sexual harassment of women and gay men is so commonplace in some neighborhoods that they feel safer to avoid those places. A number of cities, including Amsterdam, are already working to ban this type of behavior on their streets. But it is uncertain whether municipalities have the power to make such a decision. Marcouch therefore wants to put it down in law.