Ms Reem Alsalem has used her first visit to Australia to deliver the keynote address at a national conference on surrogacy in Melbourne, where she examined what she described as the “myths” that allow the surrogacy industry to “flourish.” View the full address, below.
Melbourne was host to ‘In the Name of the Child’ on 21 and 22 August 2026, organised by ARMS (Association Representing Mothers Separated by adoption) and attended by around 50 delegates. The conference’s keynote address was delivered by Ms Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences.
Ms Alsalem’s speech was based on her report to the UN last year on the different manifestations of violence against women and girls in the context of surrogacy, telling delegates that she had approached the issue “without any preconceived ideas or convictions.” She said that in her research she had identified a series of claims or “myths” as she called them that are commonly made in support of surrogacy, which she said allow “the surrogacy industry to flourish,” and structured her address around eight of these claims.
Commissioning parents and consent
The first claim she addressed was the assumption that most people who commission children through surrogacy are individuals with “a genuine desire to become parents to children related to them genetically.” Ms Alsalem said that while there were certainly persons who genuinely want to become parents, the available evidence, drawn from investigative journalism and civil society research, does not support this as the predominant profile, and that children have in some cases been commissioned for abuse, trafficking or organ removal.
On consent, she said surrogate mothers are paid “a very small fraction” of the money paid by commissioning parties, “as low as 12% to 27%,” and argued that informed consent requires full knowledge of the process and its consequences, which she said most surrogate mothers do not have. She said the majority of women who become surrogate mothers do so “because they are incredibly impoverished, poor, vulnerable. They may come from countries that are ravaged by poverty and war.” It is often one of the few options available for them to feed their families and get by yet “no one can consent to their exploitation and abuse.”
Bodily autonomy and safety, regulation and the commercial-altruistic distinction
Ms Alsalem further said surrogacy contracts typically require the surrogate mother to sign away control over decisions over the most minute details of her life, including her diet, her relations with her partner and family members, method of delivery and continuation of the pregnancy, adding that under many arrangements commissioning parties “can decide to abort the child at any moment,” without needing a legitimate medical ground. She cited hormonal treatment risks and said a surrogate mother’s safety can be “deprioritised” during complications, because the commissioned child becomes the primary concern.
Surrogate mothers, she said, are rarely given full information about the process, the extent of the control they will cede over decisions affecting their bodies, or the physical and emotional risks involved, and without that information, she argued, informed consent is not possible.
She rejected the claim that regulation resolves the harms of surrogacy, arguing that “the mere fact that demand exists does not justify … the supply,” and drew a comparison to slavery and trafficking and the clear societal but also legal understanding that despite there always being demand for both, they should not be allowed. She also said there is “no evidence” that altruistic surrogacy reduces exploitation compared with commercial surrogacy, arguing that most altruistic arrangements have the real remuneration “built into” them despite appearing to involve only reimbursement of costs.
The best interests of the child
On claims that surrogacy prioritises the best interests of the child, Ms Alsalem said surrogacy is “the only arrangement where you are already pre-planning the … transfer and abandonment and the giving away of a child,” and that “surrogacy actually condemns a child to immense vulnerability and a precarious situation even before it is born.” She said that those who commission and buy children born through surrogacy are not subject to background checks, unlike for adoption. She referred to data research on attachment and child development and the serious harm caused by the immediate removal of the child from its mother, and noted that most children born through surrogacy “don’t know and may never know” of the circumstances of their birth or their mother.
International developments
Ms Alsalem referred to her own report to the UN General Assembly and to a parallel report on surrogacy by the Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children. She noted that a number of countries are increasingly unwilling to ignore what is already known about the practice, even though the available evidence remains partial. She cited Colombia’s recent presentation of a draft bill to ban surrogacy. Italy has separately banned surrogacy outright and criminalised its citizens for seeking surrogacy abroad, even in countries where it is legal. Ms Alsalem also drew attention to a moratorium initiative launched in June 2026 at the margins of the UN Human Rights Council by Italy, Chile, Cameroon and the Holy See* which calls for a temporary pause on surrogacy to allow further data collection and prevent the continuation of egregious human rights violations and abuse, modelled on the international moratorium campaign against the death penalty.
She said she supports what she described as an abolitionist model for addressing surrogacy, under which demand would be criminalised and commissioning individuals would be subject to legal consequences, while surrogate mothers and children would be treated as victims rather than subject to criminal penalty; irrespective of that, she said, a solution upholding the best interest of the child must be found for the child that has been born. She noted that intermediaries, including fertility clinics and other intermediaries that are the ones that generate most of the profit from the exploitation and abuse that takes place in surrogacy must also be criminalised.
The Special Rapporteur closed by calling for the treatment of surrogacy as a priority issue at the international level and for which international solutions and strategies need to be found, on a par with other transnational human rights concerns.
*Supported by Argentina