The number of brothels controlled by the police and benefiting from a certain legality began to decrease in the wake of the 2011 revolution in Tunisia. And with the Covid-19 pandemic, these places of prostitution ended up disappearing, notes in a report the site Al-Monitor. While under Tunisian law paid sex is punishable by imprisonment, a number of “brothels” were hitherto tolerated and tightly controlled by the police. In Tunisia, sex work has existed since the Ottoman era.
In 2011, nearly 300 women practiced prostitution in brothels controlled and even protected by the state. But under constant pressure from the Islamists, who were able to govern until 2021, these “institutions” gradually began to disappear, leaving sex workers unprotected, left to fend for themselves, and practicing prostitution without any legal framework.
The last two brothels, those in the capital, Tunis, and Sfax (270 kilometers south of Tunis), ended up disappearing, at the time of the general confinement due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which completely paralyzed the country.
Clearly opposed to prostitution, Ahmed Gaaloul, one of the leaders of the Islamist movement Ennahda, however defends another approach. For him, it is important to save the “victims of this injustice by supporting them financially and socially so that they do not need to get involved in this business”. Just as he is in favor of the State regulating the activity of prostitution to help the women involved in “break free from this trap”.
“My friend recently met a man who offered to take her to his house, says Hanen, 35, a sex worker. She went there expecting to be with only one man, but there were five of them. They all raped her and then beat her… It happens all the time.” When the brothels were open, Hanen felt protected, but now she can’t even sleep safely.
According to the head of an association that supports these women, “many former sex workers deprived of access to health care and medical structures are exposed to viruses and victims of diseases”.