The Hague Conference is well known for its work on the International Adoption Convention in 1993. This intergovernmental institution currently brings together 89 member states, including France. Its lawyers mainly deal with issues of private international law. They draw up international conventions which the member states decide to ratify, or not.

In 2015, the Hague Conference created a Group of Experts to establish international parentage laws for children born from surrogacy, a practice which is banned in many countries.

This Group of Experts entitled “Parentage/Surrogacy” includes officials from the Ministries of Justice, lawyers, academics, as well as some associations who contribute as “observers”, such as the UNICEF. The group only met 9 times in 7 years and extremely succinct reports are available on their website.

The ICASM (International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood) has been denouncing these meetings for years. According to the coalition “working to harmonize national laws on filiation for children born from surrogacy, boils down to legitimizing surrogacy and encouraging it on a world scale”. Since 2020, the ICASM has been denouncing the fact that “The Hague Conference (HCCH) is working hard to regulate surrogacy. This is a real blank cheque to the globalized surrogacy trade, mostly in the poorest countries of the world.” Since 2020, the ICASM has been countering with a “Draft International Convention for the Abolition of Surrogacy”.

The same outcry can be heard from the “CoRP”, (COllective for the Respect of the Person). “You cannot claim to protect a child by endorsing a practice whereby he is bought and sold, treated as an object and cut off from his origins,” asserts its president, Ana-Luana Stoicea-Deram. As co-author of the book The Markets of Motherhood (2021), Odile Jacob aims at the most powerful lobby of American reproductive clinics in The Hague.

Recognition of parenthood in foreign surrogacy

What is the legal situation in Germany? What do we have to consider in the case of surrogacy abroad? How is parenthood legally recognized in Germany in surrogacy cases?

1. The ban on surrogacy

Surrogacy is forbidden in Germany.

According to Section 1 Paragraph 1 No. 7 of the Embryo Protection Act (ESchG), it is a criminal offense to carry out artificial insemination on a woman who is willing to leave her child to a third party permanently after the birth (surrogate mother) or to her to transfer a human embryo.

Lucknow: A 35-year-old woman was arrested for allegedly torturing and inflicting injuries on the private parts of her six-year-old adopted daughter.

The accused, Poonam, was arrested late Wednesday night.

The victim’s father, Ajay Kumar, informed the police about the incident and rushed the girl to a private hospital where she is undergoing treatment. Kumar owns a food cart.

Station house officer (SHO) Thakurganj, Hari Shankar Chandra told reporters that the couple did not have any child of their own and Poonam claimed that Kumar had ‘adopted’ the girl six months back. However, she was not happy with his decision and would often misbehave with the girl.

Kumar told police that his wife used a kitchen thong and then put the hot oil on the victim’s private parts.

We are a family from Denmark, we live in a city between Frederikssund and Roskilde.
 
On this page, I will tell about our experiences on our adoption of our girl Natasha, who comes from the orphanage BalVikas in Mumbai, India.

                
 
We have had some experience around Natashas behaviour and ways to respond to that has surprised us and I will tell about that here. 

My husband and I adopted two children from India. The first was the adoption in October 2001, when we had our boy Nicklas. He comes from the Orphanage Preet Mandir in Pune in India.
The second adoption was in 2004 when we took home our girl Natasha from the orphanage BalVikas in Mumbai, India.
 
We took home our daughter in September / October. 2004, and there she was 2.7 years , she is 6 years today. Already the first time we saw her, we were concerned. Natasha was the pushed hard to us with a push in the back, which we believe was unnecessary and totally inappropriate, given the first time be meeting her new mother and father and be placed in front of strangers who not only is completely different by look, but also speaks quite incomprehensible., That in itself is hard and scary enough for a child.
Then we have a girl who was emotionally and socially disturbed, she seemed very scared. She sat with the tongue out of her mouth and like suck on it and she remained deadlocked and sealed inside itself and eye contact she would not.
When you are orphanage child, this behaviour may be likely, when you are exposed to being "torn" away from your known location and from the people, which you have  been with and linked to, it could be a normal behavior, but this behaviour continued a long time after we came home to Denmark. I with my professionalism (I am a social worker in a kindergarten) to say that a normal child of almost 3 years, will very rapidly be curious to new things and toys, it was certainly not our girl.
 
Back home in Denmark took our surprise on. Our girl showed a behaviour that were most curious, we believe.
When we had to put her to bed, she screamed and showed a fear, both in body and voice, which I can not describe, she was to terrify to her bed and to close her eyes and sleep.
 
It was also quickly very clear to us that our girl had been exposed to some unpleasant on the toilet. We could not get her out on the toilet, she simply hold on to the dorframe and screamed and screamed.
When Natasha was playing in her room, we had to not close the door, she could /would not be alone if we closed the door, or would go out of the room she screamed and wept.
 
Our girl could also take on, to lie down on the floor, we had some times get to her, after we had put her, as she lay down on the floor and slept with his pillow and quilt inside under a table, that she has in her room, which is showing, with all clarity that we do not like, perhaps even fear her bed.
 
It was also quickly evident to us that our girl has been subjected to fierce scolding and that she has been beaten on the BalVikas. If we reproves her, and raise our voice, so she keeps for the ears and works very scared and we can look at her body language that she "expects" to be beaten.
 
Another thing which surprised us a lot, was that our girl was terror-stricken by men, for us it seemed as if she expected something "not good" or even hurt, when a man came into the same room.
 
Something that Natasha also has had problems with since coming home, is to feel her needs / herself.
She can eat and eat and drink and drink, she has no stop in relation to label "I do not need more, now I'm sated"
Similarly, she does not notice when she is dead tired and need sleep. She "running" out there, with 180 per hour and can not "fall"
Another thing is that Natasha is fearless, she does many "dangerous" things she does not think consequence of what can happen. She can find to climb up on a book shelves at the top, to get something and she does that by taking a table, then a chair and then she crawls up ... without thinking that she might fall down. She is very spontaneous and can actually "persuaded" to anything

INDORE: A woman allegedly inflicted burns on the private parts of her nine-year-old adopted daughter as a punishment for bedwetting in Madhya Pradesh's Indore, police said on Monday.

An offence has been registered against the 40-year-old woman under sections 294 (abusing), 323 (manhandling) and 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means) and 506 (threatening) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), MIG police station in-charge Ajay Verma said.

The accused woman is a close relative of the victim and had adopted her, he said.

The woman had inflicted burns on the child's private parts as a punishment for wetting her bed at night, the official said, adding that no arrest has been made so far in the case.

Meanwhile, Child Welfare Committee (CWC) president Pallavi Porwal said the girl had sustained serious burn injuries on her private parts, some hair on her head had been uprooted and there were nail injury marks on her body.

A MUM has revealed that she regrets adopting her daughter and feels like she is just babysitting someone else's child.

The mum of three said that she was told by doctors it would be difficult for her to conceive, so, after going through IVF for her first born, decide to adopt a daughter instead of having to go through treatment.

Taking to Reddit, the mum revealed: "We adopted this beautiful baby girl whose parents were too young to raise her themselves. I

"I loved her so much and treated her no different but I've never had the feeling she's my own.

"I often feel like I'm babysitting someone else's child.

SUCHE NACH DEN WURZELNLEIBLICHE ELTERN FINDEN: RECHTE VON ADOPTIVKINDERN

23. Februar 2024, 11:44 Uhr

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A 7-year-old boy was found dead inside of a washing machine just hours after his parents reported him missing Thursday.

At about 5.20am Thursday, the parents of Troy Khoeler filed a missing persons report with police, Lt Robert Minchew of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said during a press conference.

When police officers arrived at the home of Troy’s parents in Spring, Texas, the distraught couple said the boy had been missing since about 4am.

After the parents partook in a brief interview for the missing persons report, deputies found there were ‘signs’ indicating that they should search the house in its entirety for the boy.

Minchew could not say what those signs were, or if it was standard procedure, but authorities also searched the immediate area outside the home for the boy.

At least 30 babies born to Ukrainian surrogate mothers have reportedly been illegally sold in the Czech Republic since 2019. Six employees of a fertility clinic are suspected of having earned 1.2 million euros with child trafficking.

Vienna, Prague, Kyiv – At least 30 babies are said to have been illegally sold to foreigners in the Czech Republic since 2019 after the babies were born to Ukrainian surrogate mothers in Prague. According to Kathpress, the Vienna Institute for Medical Anthropology and Bioethics (IMABE) reported this on Monday with reference to the Czech media portal Seznam Zprávy . IMABE Managing Director Susanne Kummer has criticized surrogacy as a "deeply unethical practice at the expense of women and children".

The focus of the Czech investigation is therefore the Ukrainian agency Feskov-Human Reproduction Group with locations in Kharkiv, Kyiv and Prague. Clinic operator Alexander Feskov has been accused of human trafficking in Ukraine since last year, according to IMABE. In the meantime, six employees of the fertility clinic are also suspected of having earned 1.2 million euros with child trafficking.

The Feskov Clinic advertises a "remote guarantee program": customers or contract parents do not have to travel to Ukraine for a child via surrogacy. Both the "reproductive program" and confinement could take place depending on the country of choice. This would make it possible to circumvent stricter national laws. Because: According to Ukrainian law, only infertile and married couples are allowed for surrogacy. However, single men who wish to have children and homosexual couples from all over the world were also among Feskov's customers.

60,000 to 70,000 euros per child "ready for collection".

On April 3rd 2020, the Child-Parent Security Act (CPSA) passed in the New York Legislature, meaning that commercial or “compensated” surrogacy is now legal in the state of New York. Similar laws are in place in 46 other US states. “Compensated surrogacy will be legal in New York in February of 2021!” read the Circle Surrogacy’s jubilant advert. But to those who consider commercial surrogacy to be dangerous and exploitative, the CPSA has effectively sanctioned the pimping of pregnancy; as demand for surrogate mothers increases, so does the likelihood that women will be coerced into the arrangement by abusive husbands or boyfriends. Not to mention the associated health risks for the woman giving birth.

Gestational surrogacy is where the egg and a sperm (the embryo) are formed from material belonging to either “commissioning parents,” or from egg and sperm donors. The embryo is then transferred into a mother who carries the baby to term for the parents. The New York law allows for commercial gestational surrogacy in which the birth mother has not contributed any of her own genetic material and for commissioning parents to be named on the birth certificate. Under this law, if the birth mother changes her mind and wishes to keep the child, she will have no legal right to do so. It also requires that the baby produced from a surrogate pregnancy be born in New York, but not that the surrogate mother is a New York resident.

Traditional surrogacy (also known as partial surrogacy) involves the surrogate’s egg being fertilised with the sperm of the intended father. This remains illegal in NYC, a legacy of the 1986 Baby M case, where a surrogate mother refused to give up her baby and fled to Florida. She fought and lost a custody fight against the couple who had contracted to pay her $10,000 to bear the child. A task force was appointed in the wake of this case, resulting in traditional surrogacy and commercial surrogacy being banned in 1992. Traditional surrogacy remains against US law but the 2020 CPSA overturned the ban on commercial surrogacy in New York state.

The campaign to legalise surrogacy in New York is a decade old. Versions of the legislation were first introduced in 2012 and again in 2017. Intended parents, lawyers seeking to profit from dealing with surrogacy cases, and of course the clinics and agencies, all argued that because other states had legalised commercial surrogacy, New York should follow suit. Others argued it was discriminatory to “prevent gay couples from having the same right to fertility treatment as heterosexuals.” I heard from one lesbian couple in the US that they couldn’t agree on which one would carry the baby so they decided to “outsource the pregnancy.”

Commercial surrogacy is banned in the UK, but there are regular attempts by industry profiteers to introduce it. A number of UK couples and individuals travel to Ukraine where it is legal, but it is impossible to gage exact figures. In Ukraine, more than 2,000 children are born through surrogacy every year. The majority of “commissioning parents” are foreign, heterosexual couples. During Covid lockdown and the subsequent war, business continued and clinics merely “stored” the babies until intended parents were able to travel to collect them. Surrogate mothers continued to be sourced across the country and would give birth in collective housing facilities.