"Cambodia urged not to criminalize surrogate mothers with new law," 17 May 2019

New laws being drafted in Cambodia on commercial surrogacy must not criminalize surrogate mothers, women’s rights campaigners said...after 11 women jailed for agreeing to carry a client’s baby were released from prison.

The Southeast Asian nation has seen an uptick in commercial surrogacy after the practice was banned in Thailand in 2015, and has since been scrambling to draft a law to stamp out the trade.

In the meantime, dozens of surrogates have been charged under human trafficking laws and face up to 20 years in prison - a scenario that must change under the new law, said Chak Sopheap, head of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR).

Surrogates told the Thomson Reuters Foundation they were offered $10,000 to carry a baby, more than six times the average annual salary in a nation where one-third of the population lives on the poverty line.

The release on bail last month of 11 surrogate mothers - some of whom gave birth in detention - follows that of 32 in December who were carrying babies for Chinese clients.

All were freed on the condition that they raise the babies as their own, but they still have human trafficking charges and potential 20 year prison sentences hanging over them.

Cambodia told the United Nations in June the new law would “protect women from exploitation and ensure that the rights of any children born through surrogacy are protected”.

But CCHR’s Sopheap said that the government had yet to provide clarity on how these protections would work, leaving those already engaged in surrogacy in limbo.