The petition, launched by ICASM (International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood), is supported by sixty feminist and human rights organizations.
Context
Since 2010, the Hague Conference on Private International Law has been working on a draft international convention dealing with filiation in the context of reproductive surrogacy, in order to guarantee the effects of cross-border surrogacy for those who have recourse to it.
The outcome of this work, scheduled for 2024-2025, would be fearsome, as it would legitimize the use of reproductive surrogacy worldwide, for the benefit of an industry that exploits women's reproductive capacity. By resolutely siding with the reproductive surrogacy market, the Hague Conference is totally flouting the rights of women and children.
Even before the work is completed, its impact is being felt. Various national instances (where surrogacy is prohibited) and international instances (such as the EU) are referring to it, considering that this possible convention will enable international regulation, thus sparing them the need to make decisions at their own level.
Where reproductive surrogacy is proliferating, instead of prohibiting it, legislative initiatives are aimed at regulating it. But regulating surrogacy means, at most, normalizing the exploitation of women for their reproductive capacities, never eradicating [i].
Call
The undersigned, feminist and civil society associations, public and political figures in their capacity as defenders of the human rights of women and children, consider that the Hague Conference project, and all related projects to regulate surrogacy, violate human rights.
States are reminded here that surrogacy is to be considered as:
- An attack on human dignity, commodifying women and children. Dignity is a fundamental right protected by international law which cannot suffer any exception.
- A form of violence against women, as being female, owing to their reproductive capacities, physical, economic and psychological violence, enforced with a sham of consent: the contract.
- A practice that undermines the principle of equality of human beings, and of equality between women and men, by creating a subservient category of women assigned to procreation for third parties.
- An attack on the dignity of children whose best interests are not to be bought and sold.
- A risk for surrogate mother’s children, in terms of their psychological, mental and emotional health, as they are confronted with child trafficking within their own family.
- A trend to create a right to a child instead of an established and recognised right to form a family.
- Finally, according to international instruments, surrogacy is, on the one hand, child smuggling and, on the other hand, trafficking in women for reproductive purposes.
For all these reasons, we are launching a call to the States, asking them to:
To disapprove the protocol concerning parentage in the context of surrogate motherhood, which will be presented in 2024-2025 to the Member States of the Hague Conference on Private International Law.
Improve legislation to treat the use of surrogate motherhood as a crime of violence against women, comparable to human trafficking, whether perpetrated on their territory or abroad, on the basis of Article 3 of the Istanbul Convention.
Undertake to include a feminist perspective (on the basis of Article 6 of the Istanbul Convention) in the implementation and evaluation of the conventions they ratify, and to promote and implement gender equality policies recognising that certain types of violence affect women disproportionately and exclusively.
Promote the feminist project for an international convention for the abolition of surrogacy proposed by the CIAMS (International Coalision for the Abolition of Surrogacy.
To combat this type of crime, which affects both children and women, by strengthening transnational collaboration to put an end to reproductive exploitation.
Take into account the best interests of the child in all decisions concerning him or her, and more particularly in decisions concerning access to his or her origins (Convention on the Rights of the Child).
The only political courage today is to abolish reproductive surrogacy.
This petition, launched by ICASM (International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogacy), is supported by some 60 feminist and human rights organisations.
See the list HERE.
_______________________________________________________________________________[i] In states where surrogacy is legal, legislative changes are requested to favor the satisfaction of clients to the detriment of the human rights of women and children: (i) if the practice is considered altruistic, the requested changes aim to make it commercial (New York State, UK, Canada) or erase the birth mother (Greece); (ii) if it is commercial, any limitations concerning clients are flouted (Ukraine).
No state that has legalized or tolerates GPA protects,in any way, the rights of birth mothers or children born through surrogacy. On the contrary, when the practice is legal or tolerated, it leads to the establishment of human trafficking networks (Greece, Ukraine, Mexico).
