2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(1) While the advent of assisted reproductive technologies (‘ART’) in the 1970s brought about new possibilities for human reproduction and parenting, it also generated unprecedented ethical and legal questions for individuals and states to deal with. 84 Although the risks of statelessness through artificial insemination, invitro fertilisation and (international) surrogacy arrangements are not limited to children of LGBTIQ+ parents, 85 they may be particularly vulnerable due to the intersections with non-recognition of rainbow family structures in certain jurisdictions — all the more so when an international dimension is involved. Although not exploring implications for statelessness per se, Scott Titshaw considers the challenges that children born through ART within same-sex coparenting relationships may face to secure citizenship. 86 Interestingly, much of the work on risks of statelessness through international surrogacy arrangements cites cases of children born to LGBTIQ+ parents without sufficiently considering or commenting on the SOGIESC dimension of the examples in question. For example, in the case of baby Samuel Ghilain, scholars have acknowledged that the parents were ‘a pair of married men from Belgium’ 87 or ‘a Belgian same-sex couple using the sperm of one “commissioning father” and anonymous donor eggs’, 88 yet they have not fully explored this aspect of the parental profile in causing the statelessness, nor considered the possibility that children of ‘rainbow families’ constitute a profile at heightened risk of statelessness. A recent blog entry on the European Network on Statelessness website has drawn attention to risks of statelessness for children born within same-sex — or ‘rainbow’ — families. 89 Authored by the Vice President of the Network of European LGBTIQ* Families Associations (‘NELFA’), it centres on the case of baby Sofia, the child of married Irish–Polish lesbian couple, conceived through an IVF arrangement in Spain: Ireland does not recognise the Irish mother as she is the non-biological mother of the child, and Poland does not recognise the birth certificate with both mothers’ names on it, even though the birth mother is a Polish citizen. 90 While Spain has a safeguard against statelessness in the case that a child would otherwise be stateless, the authorities there have yet to give a decision, and the fact that Sofia arguably qualifies for both Polish and Irish citizenship according to those countries’ respective nationality laws may result in prolonging her 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 Laura Londra, Edward Wallach and Yulian Zhao, ‘Assisted reproduction: Ethical and legal issues’ (2014) 19(5) Seminars in Fetal and Neonatal Medicine 264. For the famous case of baby Manji, see Patrick Balazo, ‘Cross-Border Gestational Surrogacy in Japan and the Spectre of Statelessness’ (Working Paper No 2017/5, Statelessness Working Paper Series) 7. Scott Titshaw, ‘Sorry Ma'am, ‘Your Baby is an Alien: Outdated Immigration Rules and Assisted Reproductive Technology’ (2010) 12(1) Florida Coastal Law Review 47. Tina Lin, ‘Born Lost: Stateless Children in International Surrogacy Arrangements’ (2013) 21(2) Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law 545, 546. Claire Achmad, ‘Children’s Rights in International Commercial Surrogacy: Exploring the Challenges from a Child Rights, Public International Human Rights Law Perspective’ (PhD Thesis, Leiden University, 2018) 180. Björn Sieverding, ‘Even Where Countries in Europe Recognise Marriage Equality, Children Born to Same-Sex Families Remain at Risk of Statelessness’ European Network on Statelessness (Blog Post, 7 November) <https://www.statelessness.eu/blog/even-wherecountries-europe-recognise-marriage-equality-children-born-same-sex-families-remain>. For relevant case law, see AD-K v Poland (European Court of Human Rights, First Section, Application No 30806/15, 26 February 2019). Other research suggests that Poland takes a similar stance in cases of children born through surrogacy to same-sex couples: Mapping Statelessness in Poland (Report, UNHCR September 2019) 43. 81