prostitution

Because the words "Red Light District" explicitly refers to sex work, the term will no longer be used on signposts leading to the Wallen area, D66 alderman Victor Everhardt of Tourism said during a debate in the Amsterdam city council on Thursday, Het Parool reports.

Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema will investigate whether the prostitution sector can be moved out of the Red Light District and located in other parts of the city, including neighborhoods where more workplaces can be found. A prostitution hotel outside the Red Light District is one of the options she is looking into, she said in a city council debate on Thursday, Het Parool reports. 

A campaign was launched in Amsterdam aimed at drawing attention to the recognition of sex work. The message of the campaign is "sex work = work". Sex workers want people to understand that they are doing normal and legitimate work, NOS reports.

The two week long camping consists of electronic posters at bus- and tram stops. The posters will be shown for ten seconds every minute in different places in the city center. In both English and Dutch, the posters read: "My body. My job. My choice."

The first meeting to discuss the future of Amsterdam’s Red Light District was met with disagreement and polarizing opinions on Wednesday evening at the Compagnietheater, the 18th century former church that sits in De Wallen. The meeting, organized by Mayor Femke Halsema, gathered residents, sex workers, and entrepreneurs who will be affected by the proposed changes for the area. 

More than 40 thousand people signed a petition to make paying for sex a punishable offense. Exxpose, the Christian inspired and politically independent youth movement that initiated this petition, will hand it to the Tweede Kamer this week, the Volkskrant reports.

The number of reports of foreign men being forced into prostitution in the Netherlands doubled over the past year. The victims are often asylum seekers and refugees picked up by human traffickers, according to research by Radio Reporter, NPO Radio 1 reports.

Sex workers from dozens of countries marched through Amsterdam on Tuesday to protest for better legislation for their profession. Worldwide there is not enough attention for the safety of sex workers, said Proud, the Dutch association for sex workers and the organizer of the march, NOS and Het Parool report.

Many of the promotion girls Heineken uses in African countries to stimulate the sale of the Dutch beer, are faced with sexual harassment during their work, according to Olivier van Beemen, who investigated the situation these young women face and wrote a book about it.

In an article in NRC, Van Beemen writes that many Heineken promotion girls have to deal with sexual harassment or assault, have to go to bed with managers, and prostitute themselves to clients. Heineken has known about this problem for 15 years, but does little about it, he said.

At least 70 boys and young men between the ages of 14 and 22 years are active in prostitution in and around Eindhoven, and not all of them willingly, according to a study by welfare organization Lumens. The municipality of Eindhoven is shocked by these figures, alderman Renate Richters said to Nieuwsuur.

Criminals involved at least three school pupils in Den Bosh in prostitution and drug trading, mayor Ton Rombouts said in response to questions from PvdA city councilor Lisette van der Swaluw. The mayor believes that more kids may have been approached to become involve in illegal activities, but they wont come forward out of shame or fear for those who approached them, the Gelderlander reports.

In a city center that is filled with co-working spaces, it is not particularly surprising that a new hub for sex workers in Amsterdam's famed Red Light District is using ideas like flexible room rental agreements, a website showing who is working at any given time and what their skills are, and a sort-of networking lounge like those seen in many of the city's shared working environments. My Red Light was unveiled to journalists on Friday, over two years after the city's mayor first floated the idea of a brothel completely managed and run by sex workers.