Abstract

The paper addresses Article 14 of the Institute of International Law’s resolution on Human Rights and Private International Law, which is devoted to analysing the issue of the recognition of parentchild relationships created abroad under the competent applicable law. The rule promotes the method of recognition of legal situations instead of the so-called conflict-of laws method. In so doing, Article 14 enshrines the legal developments reached by the ECHR’s case-law over the private international law dimension of surrogacy arrangements concluded abroad in the framework of the protection of the right to private life as declined under the filter of the best interests of the child. This approach is also coherent with the jurisprudential trends relating to the recognition of parental status created abroad following Artificial Reproductive Techniques (ARTs). In this context, importance is given to the principle of the best interests of the child, which serves as the guiding-principle. The latter is regarded as an internal component of the public policy exception: the recognition of the foreign parent-child relationship entails the need to strike a fair balance as between the interests of the child, which should be taken into particular account, and the other competing interests, which are still protected under the public policy exception. The paper finally underlines that the principle of the best interests requires a concrete assessment by looking at all relevant factors of the case.