Nine months after the surrogacy ban in Cambodia (see After India and Thailand, it’s Cambodia’s turn to ban surrogacy), Prime Minister, Hun Sen, has just approved a strategy to authorise a way out of the country for babies born to Cambodian surrogate mothers and retained in the country.
The strategy includes temporary measures which will apply to babies already born and those to be born in the future. Although the strategy has not been discussed openly in detail, it will soon be the subject of an official announcement. The process must involve legal procedures and will only apply to existing cases. Parents will have a limited amount of time to implement these measures.
Some intended parents have tried to take their babies out of the country via Vietnam. The surrogate mothers, who are classed as the mothers of the babies in question,applied for a Cambodian passport and crossed the border with the child and the intended parents.
A new law on commercial surrogacy is in the pipeline. It should be finished by the end of the year.
The Cambodia Daily (03/04/2017)