Narratives of commercial gestational surrogacy (CGS) as ‘baby-selling’ often conflate or interchange the transfer of children born via surrogacy with trafficking in children or the sale of children, two sometimes overlapping but nonetheless distinct offenses. Moreover, anti-trafficking laws have been used to police cross border CGS. But when do CGS arrangements fall within the category of legitimate ‘reproductive tourism’ and when do they amount to child trafficking? In this paper I critically explore intersections between human trafficking laws and CGS, vis-à-vis the child, charting the relevant trafficking laws in the context of international surrogacy, and analysing whether trafficking laws are an appropriate mechanism through which to regulate CGS. I conclude that while child trafficking might occur via surrogacy, CGS in itself is not child trafficking under international law.
The data in this report represents signals and cases from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018 and is accurate as of July 25, 2019. Cases of trafficking may be ongoing or new information may revealed to the National Hotline over time. Consequen...Read More
The COVID-19 outbreak has been affecting Asia since January 2020. It is now a global pandemic, with over 4.5 million cases detected in 168 countries and over 300,000 deaths globally as of 15 May 2020. Much of the world has implemented severe quarant...Read More
The issue of Vietnamese nationals consistently having some of the highest numbers of referrals into the UK’s National Referral Mechanism (NRM) is increasingly apparent. However, this did not gather nationwide attention until the Essex tragedy of O...Read More
This guide for employers, jointly developed by the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) through the project From Protocol to Practice: A Bridge to Global Action on Forced Labour, aims at providing prac...Read More
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