A/HRC/56/48 apprehended, arrested or convicted,124 and third parties are rarely held to account. Often, State authorities, law enforcement and even religious figures in positions of power are sexual act buyers and/or participate in organizing and profiting from prostitution. 29. The regulation approach is practiced in Austria,125 Germany,126 Switzerland127 and Uruguay.128 In these countries, the State legalizes, organizes, regulates and profits from the prostitution of others and all commercial sex establishments through administrative or territorial laws. The approach does not address the conduct of buyers of prostitution, except through laws on rape and sexual assault, or public order, should a prostituted woman file a complaint. Often grounded in public health or city planning requirements, this approach places control on the prostituted women, prescribing their conduct, location, timing and mandatory registration within the State. While acknowledging the harm of the “working environment characterized by pimping and exploitation”, rather than seeking to eradicate them it proposes to manage them through State interventions, such as mandatory health checks,129 zoning, levies, contracts and the penalization of women who do not comply with regulations. The purported intentions to destigmatize prostituted women,130 “create jobs” with social security, better health-care conditions, reduce violence and curb criminal networks have not been achieved under this approach. For example, in Germany, of the 250,000 estimated prostituted women, only 28,280 had registered with the authorities by end of 2022, and only 50 among them had an official employment contract.131 Moreover, in a fully legalized system, States benefit from the prostitution of women through personal income tax imposed on them, the corporate taxing and licensing fees required on brothels and/or cyberenabled businesses, in essence becoming a “pimp State”.132 In Switzerland, the annual revenue generated by the commercial sex industry is estimated to be 3.2 billion CHF.133 This approach has resulted in a significant increase in foreign women in prostitution, mostly from economically challenged Eastern European countries and from the Global South. These women rarely obtain employment contracts despite the law recognizing prostitution as employment, and are in debt bondage with their pimps and traffickers. Legalization of prostitution increases the demand, fosters violence against women and girls and weakens the tools required for law enforcement to monitor, target and prosecute perpetrators, including traffickers and other third-party exploiters.134 Courts may treat situations of violence in prostitution as “work incidents”,135 and the rape of prostituted women by sexual act buyers as “theft of services”. 30. The decriminalization approach adopted in countries such as New Zealand and Belgium136 is very similar to regulation in framework and impact. The approach decriminalizes and deregulates, at the federal level, third parties, buyers and prostituted persons; however, it leaves in place administrative, police or health controls to the responsibility of local municipalities. The legal and structural aspects of the regulation versus decriminalization frameworks are almost identical. It also advocates for “harm reduction” policies such as negotiating access to brothels, identifying sexually exploited children and access to reproductive checks.137 By removing the illegality of third parties, decriminalization has aided traffickers, boosted sex tourism and expanded the overall size of the prostitution market.138 The continued high demand creates a massive incentive for exploiters to traffic 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 Submission by Autonomous Women’s Center. State of Austria prostitution regulations. Prostitution Act; Prostitution Protection Act; Pimping. Gesetz über die Ausübung der Prostitution. Ley Sobre el Trabajo Sexual. Submission by Austria. Submission by the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Submission from the Parliamentary Group on Prostitution – German Bundestag. Banyard, K., Pimp State, Faber & Faber, 2016. Swiss Federal Office for Police, Report on National Security, May 2006. Submission by SISTERS. Submission by Kofra and Initiative Stop Sexhauf. Belgium Penal Code. Submission by Human Rights Watch. Submission by Women’s Rights Party. 11