Fighting Surrogacy Regardless of Its Motives: Ordo Iuris Joins an International Coalition

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In the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural), which during the 81st session is considering the agenda item on the advancement of women, negotiations are under way on the draft resolution “Trafficking in women and girls.” The document is adopted every two years, and work on it has been coordinated since 1995 by the Permanent Mission of the Philippines to the UN. In this year’s draft, the reference to surrogacy has been limited to its “exploitative commercial” form (exploitative commercial surrogacy). Several States have proposed an amendment deleting both qualifiers. The amendment has been backed by a coalition of non-governmental organizations, which the Ordo Iuris Institute has joined.

The resolution is one of the General Assembly’s core documents on combating trafficking in persons. In its most recent edition, the Assembly once again strongly condemned trafficking in persons, especially women and children, and called on governments to allocate resources to programs for the physical, psychological and social recovery of victims. The text covers, among other things, prevention, the prosecution of perpetrators, the identification and protection of victims, and international cooperation, and also addresses phenomena that may foster the exploitation of women and girls. In this context, the 2024 resolution also referred to surrogacy.

Joint letter to the Philippines

On the initiative of the Casablanca Declaration for the Universal Abolition of Surrogacy and Alliance Defending Freedom International, a joint letter from non-governmental organizations was addressed to the Permanent Mission of the Philippines to the UN, which, as the State leading the negotiations, is responsible for the content of successive versions of the draft. The signatories support the request to remove the words “exploitative” and “commercial” from the text, so that the resolution refers to surrogacy as such, and not just to one of its forms. Ordo Iuris signed the letter as an organization cooperating with the Casablanca Declaration and ADF International at the UN on matters related to surrogacy.

The Casablanca Declaration is an international group of lawyers, physicians, psychologists and researchers whose founding document, proclaimed on March 3, 2023, calls on States to prohibit surrogacy in all its forms, regardless of whether the woman is formally paid for it. A draft international convention for the universal abolition of surrogacy is appended to the declaration. In June 2026, ADF International, a legal organization with consultative status at the UN, moderated an event in Geneva at which a group of States led by Italy and Chile presented a political declaration calling for an international moratorium on surrogacy.

Two words that narrow protection

The wording in the current draft is not new. Resolution 79/154, adopted by the General Assembly without a vote on December 17, 2024, called on States to take preventive measures against “exploitative commercial surrogacy.” At the time, Poland was among the more than 80 States co-sponsoring the draft (A/C.3/79/L.16/Rev.1). This year’s draft carries this language over into the new edition of the document.

The organizations supporting the amendment point out that the adjectives “exploitative” and “commercial” act as two overlapping filters. The first assumes that there is such a thing as surrogacy that is not exploitation; the second, that exploitation concerns only arrangements in which the woman is paid. As a result, both so-called altruistic surrogacy and any commercial form that has not been deemed exploitative fall outside the scope of anti-trafficking measures. At the level of UN language, this would amount to an implicit recognition that such forms of surrogacy are acceptable and merely require regulation.

The line between commercial and “altruistic” surrogacy was analyzed by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. In her report presented to the General Assembly in October 2025 (A/80/158), Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem pointed out that in practice this distinction is often blurred, and that the “reimbursement of expenses” received by surrogate mothers is often, in reality, remuneration. The report recommended that States work toward the elimination of surrogacy in all its forms and adopt a legally binding international instrument prohibiting it.

What do the binding treaties say?

Supporters of the amendment invoke international agreements which – unlike General Assembly resolutions – are binding on States Parties. The principal one is the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (the so-called Palermo Protocol), supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Under its Article 3(b), the consent of a victim to the intended exploitation is irrelevant where any of the means set forth in the definition have been used, including the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability, or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person. The Protocol does not differentiate protection depending on whether the exploitation is gainful for the victim.

The second instrument is the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. Its Article 1 obliges States to prohibit the sale of children, and Article 2(a) defines it as any act or transaction whereby a child is transferred by any person or group of persons to another for remuneration or any other consideration. This definition does not make the legal qualification of the act dependent on whether the remuneration was received by the mother or by an intermediary, or on the declared motives of the parties. Neither of the two protocols provides for an exception for surrogacy described as “altruistic.”

The Palermo Protocol also contains an obligation addressed directly to the demand side. Under Article 9(5), States Parties are to adopt or strengthen legislative or other measures, such as educational, social or cultural measures, to discourage the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation of persons, especially women and children, that leads to trafficking. A similar obligation arises under Article 6 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, under which States are to take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to suppress all forms of traffic in women. None of these provisions limits the State’s obligations to situations in which the woman is paid.

At the European Union level, Directive (EU) 2024/1712 of the European Parliament and of the Council, amending Directive 2011/36/EU on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings, added the exploitation of surrogacy to the list of forms of exploitation covered by the definition of trafficking in human beings. Member States were required to transpose its provisions into national law by July 15, 2026. Poland missed this deadline, and on September 25, 2026, the European Commission opened infringement proceedings against it, as well as against 19 other States, for breach of EU law.

Why does the language of the resolution matter?

General Assembly resolutions do not create binding law. Their content nevertheless has practical significance, because the wording agreed upon (agreed language) is carried over into subsequent editions of the same documents and serves as a point of reference for UN agencies, the special procedures of the Human Rights Council and the treaty bodies. The resolution “Trafficking in women and girls” is negotiated every two years, and its text is largely based on the wording of previous versions. As the current draft shows, the wording adopted in 2024 became the starting point for the 2026 negotiations.

Whether the resolution retains the narrowed wording or the full version is adopted will determine how surrogacy is described in UN documents on trafficking in persons: as a practice that is, in principle, contrary to the dignity of the woman and the child, or as a service whose abuses merely need to be curbed. The organizations supporting the amendment stress that entrenching the language of “exploitative commercial” surrogacy in another edition of the resolution would make it harder in the future for States that – like Italy or Slovakia – have banned the practice to invoke it.

The debate is unfolding in parallel in other UN fora. The political declaration on an international moratorium on surrogacy, presented in June 2026 during the 62nd session of the Human Rights Council, indicates that concerns about the practice are not limited to commercial arrangements. Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem reached the same conclusion in her report.

In report A/80/158, the Special Rapporteur also drew attention to the situation of children born through surrogacy. She pointed out that the absence of any screening of the persons commissioning a child increases the risk of child trafficking, abandonment and abuse, and that in cross-border cases children often experience statelessness and lose knowledge of their own origins. For this reason, the report recommends that, until the practice is eliminated, States take action to prevent further harm and to strengthen the protection of the rights of women and children involved in surrogacy arrangements.

What next?

The draft resolution remains the subject of informal consultations conducted by the Philippines. Once they conclude, the lead State will submit a final version to the Third Committee, which will then take action on it – by consensus or by a vote. During the previous edition, the Third Committee approved the draft on November 14, 2024, and the General Assembly adopted the resolution at a plenary meeting on December 17, 2024. States that disagree with particular wording may submit amendments to a vote or distance themselves from selected paragraphs in explanations of position.

“International law does not recognize the category of ‘voluntary’ trafficking in women and children. The Palermo Protocol states that the victim’s consent is irrelevant where her situation has been exploited, and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits the transfer of a child for any consideration whatsoever, with no exception for so-called altruistic surrogacy. Leaving the words ‘exploitative’ and ‘commercial’ in the resolution would mean that the UN implicitly recognizes the existence of a form of surrogacy that is acceptable. Yet the mother is the woman who carries the child and gives birth to it, and an agreement under which she is to give the child up violates the dignity of both, regardless of its nature. We hope that Poland’s delegation, which co-sponsored this resolution in 2024, will support its full wording this year,” says Julia Książek of the Ordo Iuris Center for International Law.

See also:

• A Step Toward a Ban on Surrogacy. An International Coalition Calls for a Moratorium
• Pressure Works. Warsaw’s ‘Surrogacy Fair’ Canceled
• Surrogacy Is the Sale of Children: Ordo Iuris Joins an International Coalition Appealing to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
• Child Trafficking in the Heart of Warsaw
• Illegal Adoption and Human Trafficking: Ordo Iuris Notifies Polish Prosecutors Over a Surrogacy “Fair”

Source of cover photo: iStock