Prostitution was legalised in Lebanon after World War I when the government decided that concentrating prostitutes in one area – Mutanabbi Street, which became Beirut’s downtown red-light district before it was destroyed in the Civil War – would protect Lebanese women from French and Senegalese soldiers.Īccording to the Lebanese Prostitution Law of 1931, brothels were divided into two groups: public brothels and escort houses.
It is not illegal to work as a licensed prostitute but seeing as the government has not issued any such licences since the 1970s, those working as prostitutes are vulnerable to being arrested and punished.īeirut is no stranger to the sex industry. The punishment is a prison sentence of anything from a month to a year.
DUBAI ARABIC TEEN PORN CODE
Article 523 of the Lebanese Penal Code criminalises “any person who practices secret prostitution or facilitates it”. The plight of these women is compounded by the way the law is applied in Lebanon. While the ISF formally identified 29 victims – 10 of whom were Lebanese and 13 Syrian – of sex trafficking in 2017, the most recent year for which there is data, other sources, including officers at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and NGOs, put the number in the thousands. But the numbers are hard to verify because of the hidden nature of the problem. Beirut, the Lebanese capital, and Jounieh, a coastal town about 10km (6.2 miles) north of it, are where most victims of sex trafficking end up in Lebanon.Ī GS officer estimated that there are at least 800 women and girls who have been forced into prostitution in these areas.
Paul has learned the ins-and-outs of Lebanon’s trafficking world over the years. “ the last time I tried to help one of them get in touch with an NGO, I got beaten and threatened by her captors.”Įveryone in Lebanon’s “sex trade” seems to be involved in trafficking in one way or another: Sources at both the Internal Security Forces (ISF) and the General Directorate of General Security (GS) in Beirut told Al Jazeera that even pimps working further down the chain of command ultimately report to a bigger network of organised traffickers. Beirut, Lebanon – “How do I know most of the women working as prostitutes are controlled?” asked Paul, a volunteer for the Jesuits, a religious order of the Roman Catholic Church, before answering his own question.
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