Red light district ‘Human Window Displays’ in Amsterdam to end soon

Friday, July 5, 2019

Femke Halsema, the first female mayor of Amsterdam has taken the initiative to address ‘ the humiliation of women by large groups of tourists’.

Residents, business owners and women shared their opinion in interviews which further led Halsema to consider the practice of visitors staring at the women with no intention of paying for their services as ‘unacceptable’.

Many solutions has been proposed to the issues, one among them is that the Netherlands capital’s 330 windows will be obscured by curtains.

According to Halsema the traditional, licensed form of sex works in parts of the city centre is currently under pressure because of the growing number of visitors to Amsterdam.

The sex workers were no more than an attraction to look at for most of the visitors and it was also noted in some cases it was accompanied by disruptive behavior and a disrespectful attitude.

There was also a major increase in unlicensed, invisible prostitution and other proposals included closing some or all of the windows in the city centre.It might be relocated elsewhere mostly into a sex work hotel.

There will be further discussion between Halsema and the locals over the summer to make plans and present all the options to the city council, lawyers and finance team in September.

Earlier Amsterdam decided to outlaw all tours of the Red Light District from 2020.

There will be capping on the number of people allowed on guided tours of the city’s medieval centre  encompassing the red light district in the Netherlands capital. It will be restricted to 15 per group.

From January 1, 2020 the changes will come into effect and the ban will also include pub crawls and guided walks.

Deputy mayor Udo Kock in March said that they did not considered it appropriate for for tourists to leer at sex workers and it was no longer appropriate to see sex workers as a tourist attraction.

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