Prostitution in Armenia

In Armenia prostitution and erotic tourism are lawful, but running a whore-house is forbidden and engaging in other ways of pimping are punished by 1 to 10 years' locking up. According to media information, there were less than 5,000 women involved in prostitution in Armenia, roughly 1,500 of them were in Yerevan. Police and other safety forces reportedly tolerated prostitution. The country is a basis and transit point for women and girls trafficked primarily for sexual and, to a lesser extent, labor misuse to the United Arab Emirates and Turkey... Traffickers, using developed networks in source and target countries, naturally recruited victims who were already engaged in prostitution. The greater part, but not all, of the known losses were aware that they would end up in the sex industry in other countries, however, they were uninformed of the traffickers' aim or the exploitative situation they would face abroad. Ladies engaged in prostitution, orphans who had outgrown their institutions, homeless or widows, and girls in hard economic conditions were at maximum risk of being trafficked. There were various reported incidents of bodily aggression against trafficking victims.^[1]

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