Fighting sex trafficking (Illustration)
צילום: איי פי
State plans survey on prostitution
Knesset Committee on the Status of Women discusses programs to eradicate prostitution, rehabilitate victims of sexual assault, lack of true data on phenomena is Israel
The Knesset Committee on the Status of Women discussed the Social Affairs, Health and Education ministries plan to eradicate prostitution in Israel and to rehabilitate victims of sexual assault.
Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog told the committee that his ministry allotted hundreds of thousands of shekels in favor of a special survey on the extent of prostitution in Israel.
According to the Toda'a Institute for the research of prostitution and sex trafficking, which is a member of the international Coalition Against the Trafficking of Women, 20,000 women and men is Israel prostitute themselves. Some 5,000 of them are teenagers and children.
The committee also discussed the funding needed for its programs. Both programs were budgeted in 2007, but the transfer of the funds had been delayed, and they are held in trust by the Treasury. A Finance Ministry representative present at the meeting said that so far, no timetable has been set for a budgetary transfer.
Minister Herzog told Ynet that "these are extremely important programs. The funding will allow us to put them in motion and we will demand the Treasury transfer it immediately."
Knesset Member Orit Zuaretz (Kadima), chairman of the subcommittee on sex trafficking noted the lack of substantial information on the scope of prostitution in Israel, adding as an example that one of the plights of women who are released from prison, is that they have no real way of getting their lives back together and therefore are reduced to prostitution.
