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Surrogacy in Ukraine is lawful, but it sits at the meeting point of medical, civil and administrative law, with elements of private international law. When foreign citizens take part in a programme, registering the birth and then arranging the child’s travel documents brings additional procedural and evidential requirements. The starting point is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: a child is to be registered immediately after birth and has from birth the right to a name and to acquire a nationality.
Registration itself rests on the Family Code (Article 123(2) and Article 139), the Law on state registration of civil status acts, the Ministry of Justice Rules approved by Order No. 52/5, Order No. 787 of the Ministry of Health, and the wartime Order No. 407 on registering newborns. The Rules provide that where a woman has given birth to a child conceived by a married couple through assisted reproduction, registration is carried out on the application of that couple, together with the document confirming the birth, the surrogate’s notarised consent to the couple being recorded as the parents, and a certificate of genetic relationship. The clear advantage of Ukrainian law is that the intended parents are entered in the birth record straight away.
Two wartime changes are worth noting: registration is no longer tied to the place of birth or residence — any civil registry office will do — and, where a birth happens outside a medical facility, the medical birth certificate (form 103/o) may be issued by the medical staff who attended the birth or first examined the child.
In the article I go through each of the three grounds for registration and the gaps in them.
The medical birth certificate looks identical whether the pregnancy was natural or a surrogacy, and cases do occur in which a surrogate registers the child in her own name, leaving the lawful parents to bring court proceedings to contest maternity — slow, and against the child’s interests. One such case, in which the record was corrected in favour of an Italian couple, was decided by the Bohunskyi District Court in Zhytomyr in 2013. In my view the instruction on completing the birth certificate should be amended so that the certificate states the nature of the pregnancy.
The surrogate’s notarised consent raises a harder question: what if she cannot give it — if she dies in childbirth or is gravely ill afterwards? Then the intended parents must go to court, and the child’s status stays undefined for months. In 2023 the Shevchenkivskyi District Court in Kyiv established that a Swedish couple were the parents of twin girls whose surrogate had died in labour. There is also a question of principle: given the presumption in Article 123(2), what does her consent add? It carries weight only in jurisdictions that give the surrogate time after the birth to decide. I see several possible solutions — doing away with the consent altogether, taking it before the birth, or spelling out what replaces it when the surrogate dies or is gravely ill, for instance a copy of the gestational carrier agreement.
The certificate of genetic relationship is issued by the clinic from its own records; it is not a DNA test. Whether a DNA test should be among the required documents is still debated among doctors and lawyers.
Foreign intended parents without residence in Ukraine must additionally produce passports with the border-crossing stamp and a marriage certificate, each apostilled or consularised and accompanied by a notarised Ukrainian translation. Registry offices may ask for more — contracts with medical and organisational service providers, transport records for biological material, clarifying letters from the clinic, sometimes DNA results. Since the start of the full-scale invasion registrars have been more flexible about deadlines and have accepted temporary documents, but as couples now enter programmes knowing the risks, a complete set of documents is critical.
One point deserves particular attention: unlike ordinary births, which either parent may register, Order No. 52/5 requires both spouses to take part in the application. The decision to enter a programme must therefore be a considered, mutual one. Where a couple falls out during the pregnancy and only one of them comes to Ukraine, registration is not possible without the other’s properly executed application — even if the marriage has been dissolved — and that parent faces court proceedings instead. The Dniprovskyi District Court in Kyiv took an unprecedented step in 2023, establishing the parental link of an unmarried French citizen and ordering registration with “no information” in the mother’s column, relying on the best interests of the child and Article 8 of the European Convention. That position is nonetheless unusual and contestable: marriage is a fundamental condition of taking part in a Ukrainian surrogacy programme, and the law makes no provision for an absent mother.
Registration through a representative is a different matter. It is often said that this is not allowed in Ukraine, but representation is established in Article 237 of the Civil Code, and the only limit, in Article 238, concerns acts that by their nature can only be done in person — making a will, marrying, adopting. Where properly executed and legalised powers of attorney and applications exist, with an explanation of why the parents cannot attend, the registry office has no lawful ground to refuse.
Finally, there are conflicts between Ukrainian law and the law of other states. Many countries restrict surrogacy and do not automatically recognise Ukrainian birth certificates, which means further steps for foreign parents — both at their embassy in Ukraine and, possibly, after returning home: court procedures, changes to consular records, adoption. That is why the law of the country of citizenship and of permanent residence has to be analysed before the programme starts.
Ukrainian law provides a sufficient basis for these programmes and a working mechanism for registering the birth with foreign parents. In practice, though, much depends on the documents being drawn up correctly, and some procedural risks remain — which is why clearer regulation is needed in the best interests of the children born.