Washington and Lee University School of Law Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons Scholarly Articles Faculty Scholarship 1994 Forced Prostitution: Naming an International Offense Nora V. Demleitner Washington and Lee University School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlufac Part of the Criminal Law Commons, and the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Nora V. Demleitner, Forced Prostitution: Naming an International Offense, 18 Fordham Int'l L. J. 163 (1994). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scholarly Articles by an authorized administrator of Washington & Lee University School of Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Fordham International Law Journal Volume 18, Issue 1 1994 Article 5 Forced Prostitution: Naming an International Offense Nora V. Demleitner∗ ∗ Copyright c 1994 by the authors. Fordham International Law Journal is produced by The Berke- ley Electronic Press (bepress). http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj Forced Prostitution: Naming an International Offense Nora V. Demleitner Abstract This paper presents an argument for recognizing “forced prostitution” as an international of- fense in its own right for which the procurers, brothel owners and managers, and financiers as well as the women’s customers can be held criminally liable. While the international debate has at- tempted to characterize forced prostitution as slavery, the term ”slavery” fails to evoke the images of all the violations that encompass forced prostitution. Were the United Nations and regional or- ganizations to acknowledge and label forced prostitution as an international crime, their member states would be required to enact domestic legislation outlawing and criminalizing it as well as strictly enforcing those provisions. While forced prostitution could be prosecuted in most coun- tries under a variety of statutes, the international community has not succeeded in its attempts to decrease the prevalence of the practice because it lacks a universal rallying point that would focus attention on the dismal practice. .