A human trafficking ring in Georgia is being investigated by police after three Thai women claimed they had been tricked into having their eggs harvested.
The three Thai nationals were sent back to Thailand after claiming they were being held captive in Georgia along with dozens of other women who travelled to the Eastern European country under the guise of being surrogate mothers.
One of the women told a press conference that she had signed up to the apparent surrogate program after seeing a social media advertisement that promised potential surrogate mothers $1,182 (25,000 baht) a month, while living with a family.
The woman, who remained anonymous and covered her face during the press conference, claimed she’d made stop-overs in Dubai and Armenia on her way to Georgia, where she was met by two Chinese nationals who took her to a house.
“They took us to a house where there were 60 to 70 Thai women,” the woman said. “The women there told us there was no [surrogacy] contracts or parents. [The women] would be injected to get treatment, anaesthetised and their eggs would be extracted with a machine. After we got this information and it was not the same as the advertisement, we got scared, we tried to contact people back home.”
Another victim, who spoke to the media by a livestream on the foundation’s Facebook page earlier this week, said she saw a job advertisement on Facebook promising an income of 400,000 to 600,000 baht ($18,000 to $28,000).
According to the three women, they had their passports taken away and were told by their captors that they would risk being arrested if they returned to their home country.
The women added that they pretended to be sick while they were being held captive in order to avoid having their eggs harvested.
According to Pavena Hongsakula, founder of the Pavena Foundation for Children and Women, a Thai-based NGO which helped officials repatriate the three women, the collected eggs were believed to be sold and then trafficked in other countries for use in in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).
Hongsakula, one of the key figures who notified authorities about the criminal ring, said an estimated 100 more trafficked women remained in Georgia.
On Friday, the Commander of the Foreign Affairs Division of the Royal Thai Police, Surapan Thaiprasert, said that Thai authorities are currently investigating.
According to the International Committee for Monitoring Assisted Reproductive Technologies, more than 120,000 embryos were created globally with donated eggs in 2019, but the real number is likely much higher, with several illegal trafficking operations exploiting vulnerable women – many, as in the case of the Thai women, deceived into undergoing the procedure.
A 2006 investigation by The Observer revealed a burgeoning global trade in women’s eggs where infertile women in the UK who could not find a local donor paid thousands of pounds for the chance of finding one overseas. In late 2024, Bloomberg Businessweek released a long form investigation into details about the ways the human egg is becoming a precious resource traded around the world, with the unregulated industry risking the lives of vulnerable, disenfranchised women.