Critics warn Mexico City over prostitution proposal

By Hugh Collins
REUTERS

MEXICO CITY – A proposal to legalize prostitution in Mexico City risks making women more vulnerable to human traffickers forcing them onto the street as sex slaves, a U.S. academic said Friday.

At a conference on human trafficking, Rhode Island University professor of Women's Studies Donna Hughes said a plan by Mexico City's left-wing government to make prostitution legal in the capital could mean more women and children coerced into being sex workers.

Networks of human traffickers prey on homeless women and children, as well as illegal immigrants, often offering them promises of jobs in Mexico City or the United States but instead forcing them into prostitution.

Prostitution is illegal in Mexico but is widely tolerated everywhere from grimy street corners to swanky brothels. Police can easily be bribed to turn a blind eye to sex workers.

Legalizing it is the latest liberal idea by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) – which runs the capital's government and has a majority in the city assembly – since it legalized gay civil unions and abortion earlier this year.

For more on prostitution in Mexico, read here and here . -mm