A United Nations official is being asked to recognize surrogacy as a contemporary form of slavery on the basis that the child becomes an object of disposal, which fits the definition of slavery under the 1926 Slavery Convention. Surrogacy is a hotly debated issue, with some people seeing it as a means for people to have children and others criticizing it as turning human life into a commercial transaction. It's already banned in dozens of countries, including France, Spain, China, and Italy, and other countries only allow altruistic surrogacy, where no pay can be exchanged.
In a letter to Katarina Schwarz, the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery and trafficking in persons, a group of international organizations said the love of the child isn't being questioned. But the group said surrogacy at its core is the "commissioning and handover of a child," and makes the child an object of a contract. "The link between surrogacy and slavery then becomes apparent, since the 1926 Geneva Convention on Slavery defines in its Article 1 slavery as 'the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised,'" the petition said.
Newsweek reached out to the United Nations via email for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication. Among the organizations that signed the letter are the Casablanca Declaration Group of Experts, an international human rights manifesto and expert group; Juristes pour l'enfance, a nonprofit fighting against surrogacy; and the Ordo Iuris Institute, a Polish Catholic think tank. The petition said that modern-day slavery looks very different from slavery in the historical context.
So, while a surrogate may not appear on a person's "balance sheet," a woman still exercises rights over her body through the contract of surrogacy. "A woman’s consent to submit to surrogacy is not the exercise of a right freely to dispose of her body as she sees fit. It is, rather, a purported right to consent to her own exploitation and to her own enslavement," the petition stated.
Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, stated in a 2025 report that surrogacy reinforces "patriarchal norms by treating women's bodies as commodities and objects." In 2018, Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, then-UN special rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, raised concerns about surrogacy. She said there's no right for someone to have a child under international law and that commercial surrogacy "usually amounts to the sale of children." Boer-Buquicchio also expressed concerns about people from wealthy nations exploiting people from low-income nations for surrogacy. In 2025, the battle over surrogacy at the UN heated up when Alsalem proposed that the UN General Assembly abolish all forms of surrogacy.
She argued that the practice inflicted multiple forms of violence on women and abolishing it was necessary because a ban could change. "They have absolutely no say in the process,” Alsalem previously told Newsweek in reference to the babies born from surrogacy. That’s what separates ethical surrogacy from baby buying.” Surrogacy rules differ drastically by country, and in the United States, they even depend on which state a person is in.
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