Australia urges Cambodia to crack down on surrogacy services

[geovalin]

Australia has urged Cambodia to crackdown on commercial surrogacy as an increasing number of Australian couples ignore warnings not to seek surrogacy services in the country. 

Australian officials fear couples seeking to become biological parents of babies born to surrogate mothers will become entangled in Cambodia's murky and corrupt legal system.

The south-east Asian country ruled by strongman Hun Sen has emerged as the latest hub of Asian surrogacy despite its authorities declaring in 2014 that engaging in or commissioning commercial surrogacy is human trafficking with penalties including imprisonment and fines.

Several dozen Australian couples are believed to have gone to Cambodia in the past year after commercial surrogacy was banned in Thailand, Nepal and India. 

Many of the vitro fertilisation (IVF) doctors, lawyers and agencies chased out of Thailand after the Thai military shutdown the industry there following the Baby Gammy scandal in 2014 have relocated to Phnom Penh, where their businesses are again booming. 

Australia's ambassador in Cambodia Angela Corcoran urged that Cambodia take action on surrogacy and offered Australia's help in developing a draft law to regulate commercial surrogacy during talks with Cambodian officials last Friday.  

 

"The Australian side initiated the idea but my minister needs to study the possibility," Justice Ministry spokesman Kim Santepheap told the Cambodia Daily. 

Mr Santepheap told the Phnom Penh Post that Australia's input focused on children's rights, adding that brokers who arrange surrogate pregnancies could still be prosecuted under the existing criminal code. 

The case of baby Gammy, underlines why we shoudl reexamine Australian surrogacy laws. Photo: AP

Until now Cambodian authorities have largely ignored surrogacy agencies in the capital which decline to speak openly about their practices to the media, apparently fearing a government crackdown or public backlash in the conservative and deeply Buddhist nation. 

Mr Santepheap said the Justice Ministry has received no reports of surrogacy arrangements despite agencies boasting of successful births on their websites. 

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen Photo: AP

Several births are believed to be for Australian couples. 

 

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