SA To Tighten The Rules For Foreigners To Do For Families

In the wake of the adoption of Madonna in Malawi in the nearby town, and a boom in commercial surrogacy in India, South Africa on stricter rules for foreigners seeking to visit family here.

Last month, a court in Pretoria, establish guidelines for foreigners wishing to hire a surrogate mother in South Africa. In 2010, has a new child labor legislation more difficult for foreigners to adopt.

In addition, the message is that children born in South Africa are better in their country, and foreigners must show their commitment to live here if they want to use to help South Africans to make a family.

In the case last month, a couple from Holland and Denmark got permission to use a surrogate mother. In its ruling, the court establishes guidelines that Pretoria will now be directly the number of future cases will be resolved.

Surrogacy is legal in South Africa since 2006, and that the Constitution guarantees equal protection for gays, that the courts have cited to allow homosexual couples to adopt or use surrogates.

Foreigners, the decision means that I had to stay in South Africa in the long run. A couple involved in the case will settle here permanently, the decision of the Court said.

“If you are a French or foreign here for six months, it is not going to work unless you live in South Africa indefinitely,” said William Anthony, a lawyer representing the couple.

“This decision is important because it defines the parameters and guidelines.”

South African law specifically prohibits commercial surrogacy. The court took a look at India, where the practice was authorized in 2002, creating an “assisted reproduction” of the industry in 2008 was valued at $ 450 million per year.

This has attracted families to the richest countries, taking surrogates in India, much less than the process of paying their own country – one of South Africa wants to avoid.

“Most countries prohibit commercial surrogacy, India is a notable exception,” the ruling said.

The court warned that “especially in countries like ours, with deep socioeconomic inequalities and the prevalence of poverty, the possibility of abuse of poor women is a real and pervasive.”

Any contract of surrogacy in South Africa requires the approval of the Court must find that the agreement was made “for altruistic reasons and not commercial,” the court said.

Surrogacy can receive money to pay the costs associated with pregnancy such as sickness or maternity clothes, said Jennifer Currie, founder of Baby Mum-2 agency specializing in egg donation.

The rules were tightened also for foreigners who wish to adopt.

How the new law on child protection was approved last year, foreigners are required to live in South Africa, five years before they can accept – even though South Africa has 1.9 million AIDS orphans.

Most of these children are absorbed into extended families or communities and not in institutions. Only about 600 are “legally adoptable”, only 200 children legally adopted last year, according to official figures.

The new law was drafted as Madonna was the adoption of her second child in Malawi, stirring controversy about wealthy foreigners to the home of African children.

South Africa wants children to have a relationship “with their family around familiar cultural, natural and extended, before looking to the adoption in the country or outside the country,” said Seamus Mac Roibin, a specialist Child Protection for UNICEF, the agency of the UN children,  Source of times live.