Dubai is home to a very large expatriate population and has attracted 19 million visitors in According to a French daily Le Monde, prostitution, officially banned but de facto tolerated, has turned Dubai into a favored destination for sex tourism in the Gulf. Dubai's gamble on its spectacular integration into globalization has been particularly successful, even after the financial crisis of , which forced the emirate to develop its service activities, with tourism at the forefront.
Alcohol consumption is allowed in hotels, bars, restaurants and nightclubs with a specific license , although it is still prohibited in public spaces. It is usually in such places that sex workers solicit the potential client. It is thus possible to hire the services of an escort girl during one's stay in the emirate.
A tacit hierarchy considers Chinese, Filipino or Indian prostitutes of lesser value than their Central Asian counterparts, who are still less appreciated than European women, whether Russian, Ukrainian or Western. Arab partners remain the rarest, and therefore the most sought after, as they work less often in the public space. The number of active prostitutes in Dubai is sometimes estimated at 45, It is of course impossible to know this number precisely, as it is based on a complex system where Emirati nationals, authorized to "sponsor" the entry of a certain number of foreigners on residence visas, give these sponsorship rights to intermediaries, without necessarily knowing the real activity of the future "immigrants.
The residence visa system, despite its reform, continues to allow this type of manipulation, while the networks dismantled tend to concern the lower end of the prostitution market. The transaction often concluded without intermediaries accredits the illusion of an absence of pimping, even though it is inconceivable to offer such services in Dubai without solid protection.
The UN published in the testimony of a "sex slave" from Uzbekistan who, after 18 months of nightmare in Dubai, preferred to let herself be arrested by the Emirati police in order to be deported. More recently, it is in Bangladesh that the revelations of victims of this type of trafficking, lured to Dubai by false promises of domestic employment, have been broadcasted.
