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Summary
Naija Feminists Media joined 214 organisations worldwide in supporting the UN’s call for a global ban on surrogacy. The move highlights growing concern over the practice’s exploitative impact on women and children.
Naija Feminists Media has joined 214 organisations from across the world in supporting the United Nations’ call for a global ban on surrogacy. The organisation was among the three only Nigerian group listed as the co-signatories endorsing the UN report on the issue.
The undersigned organisations, representing diverse regions and ideologies, urged all Member and Observer States of the United Nations to fully support the report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Its Causes and Consequences. The report was presented to the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly at its 80th Session on October 10, 2025.
Titled “The Different Manifestations of Violence Against Women and Girls in the Context of Surrogacy” (A/80/158), the report by UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, concludes that surrogacy is rooted in commodification and exploitation that undermine the dignity and human rights of women and children. It also highlights how the practice disproportionately targets women in vulnerable situations, reducing them to instruments of reproduction while ignoring the best interests of the child, who is treated as an object rather than a subject of rights.
The report calls for the complete eradication of surrogacy through a legally binding international instrument that would prohibit the practice globally.
In line with this stance, Naija Feminists Media, through an investigative report led by Simbiat Bakare, exposed the exploitative nature of surrogacy in Nigeria. The investigation, which featured the story of Teitope Afolabi, revealed how misinformation, Facebook groups, and legal loopholes push women into unsafe and exploitative surrogacy arrangements.
Following the publication of the report, Facebook deleted nine Nigerian surrogacy groups with over 38,000 members after the investigation uncovered widespread exploitation, health risks, and a lack of legal protection for women involved in the practice.
A few of the other organisations that backed the ban include Abogados por la Vida AC (Argentina), Active Watchful Waiting (Australia), Adoption Truth and Transparency Worldwide Information Network (United States), Africa Christian Professionals Forum (Kenya), Campaign Life Coalition (Canada), Casablanca Declaration for the Universal Abolition of Surrogacy (France), Feminist No to Surrogacy (Sweden), Le Syndicat de la Famille (France), and Lesbian Persistence (United Kingdom), among others.
