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.
This report, entitled, ‘Prevention of adult sexual and labour exploitation in the UK: What does or could work?’ is a Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre (the Modern Slavery PEC) research project. It was developed ...Read More
A new report, Real Care is Rare. An On-The-Ground Perspective on Blood Diamonds and the Fifth ‘C’, highlights the existence of modern day blood diamonds due to ongoing ties between diamonds and brutal human rights abuse (amongst other ...Read More
The data in this report represents signals and cases from January 1, 2019 through December 31, 2019 and is accurate as of July 30, 2020. Cases of trafficking may be ongoing or new information may revealed to the National Hotline over time. Consequen...Read More
This report was originally conceived to be an exploratory analysis of case data on trafficking and exploitation in Southeast Asia that begins online, trying to understand if recruitment is occurring via social media, messaging apps and websites and,...Read More
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