Prostitution in Syria is illegal, [ 1 ] but the law is not strictly enforced. Since the start of the Syrian Civil War , many women have fled the country and turned to prostitution to survive in Jordan , [ 4 ] Turkey [ 5 ] and the Lebanon.
Sex trafficking [ 7 ] and child sex tourism [ 8 ] are problems in Syria. During the era of slavery in Syria prostitution was connected to slavery. The Islamic Law formally prohibited prostitution.
However, since the principle of concubinage in Islam in Islamic Law allowed a man to have sexual intercourse with his female slave, prostitution was practiced by a pimp selling his female slave on the slave market to a client, who was allowed to have intercourse with her as her new owner, and who then returned his ownership to her pimp on the pretext of discontent after having had intercourse with her, which was a legal and accepted method for prostitution in the Islamic world.
Ismail al-Jazari β describes a Damascus procuress in his writings. She recruited women for work as prostitutes at weddings. She took the women to a safe place out of town where her husband was the pimp. Eventually they were arrested. The woman confessed during torture and was strangled. The husband fled and was never caught. In Ottoman Syria prostitution of free women was tolerated. From onward, many women fleeing from the war in Iraq were practising underworld prostitution for living.
In the s, the country was a destination for sex tourism by the Arab world , [ 15 ] particularly Saudi Arabia. In the Saidnaya suburb of Damascus, there were over 'tourist clubs' where mainly underage girls were available. After the start of the civil war, tourism dropped off.
