A/HRC/37/60 children and child rights as per international standards and protection issues that arise under contemporary surrogacy practice. The implications of surrogacy for women’s rights is beyond the scope of the present study, except as regards issues that affect both children’s rights and women’s rights, or certain clear rights violations that illuminate regulatory or enforcement issues. The Special Rapporteur echoes the position of other human rights experts who have stated that discrimination against women, through the instrumentalization of their bodies for cultural, political, economic and other purposes, including when rooted in patriarchal conservatism, cannot be accepted. 13 The Special Rapporteur encourages other human rights mechanisms and United Nations entities to contribute with further research to discussions on surrogacy and its impact on the human rights of women and other stakeholders concerned, in order to develop human rights-based norms and standards and prevent abuses and violations. Nothing in the present report should be interpreted as a restriction of women’s autonomy in decision-making or of their rights to sexual and reproductive health. 12. The study benefited from contributions by international experts and relevant international organizations. The Special Rapporteur organized an expert meeting on surrogacy in Geneva on 1 November 2017. The Special Rapporteur also participated in an expert meeting on surrogacy convened by the International Social Service in May 2017 at the Department of Law of the University of Verona, Italy. The Special Rapporteur particularly wants to thank members of the core expert group of the International Social Service surrogacy project for contributions in developing the study. The Special Rapporteur has benefited from reviewing the work of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Council of Europe and the Hague Conference on Private International Law. The Special Rapporteur has also gained insight from her missions to various countries. B. Urgent concerns 13. Surrogacy as a reproductive practice is on the rise. Indeed, as intercountry adoptions have fallen in number and increasingly become subject to international standards, the numbers of international surrogacy arrangements have rapidly increased in the absence of international standards.14 Therefore, surrogacy, like intercountry adoption in the 1980s and 1990s, has emerged as an area of concern where a demand-driven system may endanger the rights of children. 15 There is also “unease” and concern that “the practice of engaging surrogates in States with emerging economies to bear children for more wealthy intending parents from other States has dimensions similar to those discussed in the preparatory reports on intercountry adoption”.16 14. The cross-border patterns of international surrogacy arrangements are diverse. Commonly, intending parents from developed countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America, have engaged in commercial international surrogacy arrangements with surrogate mothers in developing countries, such as Cambodia, India, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Nepal and Thailand.17 However, California and other jurisdictions in the United States are centres for commercial international surrogacy arrangements, as are Georgia, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, creating a different set of 13 14 15 16 17 4 See A/HRC/32/44, para. 106 (a). See Katarina Trimmings and Paul Beaumont, eds., International Surrogacy Arrangements (2013), pp. 439, 441 and 442. See J.H.A. van Loon, “Report on intercountry adoption”, preliminary document No. 1, sect. E, pp. 51–55, available at https://assets.hcch.net/upload/adoption_rpt1990vloon.pdf; cf. HCCH, “A preliminary report on the issues arising from international surrogacy arrangements”; and see Chief Federal Magistrate Pascoe (Australia), “Intercountry surrogacy – a new form of trafficking?”, available at www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/FedJSchol/2012/15.pdf; and Chantal Saclier (International Social Service), “Children and adoption: which rights and whose?”, UNICEF, Innocenti Digest 4: Intercountry Adoption, pp. 12–13. See HCCH, “A preliminary report on the issues arising from international surrogacy arrangements”, para. 5 as well as footnote 28. See Trimmings and Beaumont, p. 472.