The Institution of a “New Form” of Filiation in Cameroonian Law in the Light of Scientific and Technological Progress: Filiation by Medically Assisted Reproduction

Without creating a new Galileo trial, Law 2022/014 of 14 July 2022 relating to medically assisted reproduction (MAR) in Cameroon has enabled the legislature to encourage medically assisted reproduction while rejecting techniques for marketing or using human material that are contrary to fundamental rights, human dignity and ethics. The concept of surrogate motherhood (GPA), for example, is prohibited by the legislature as far as reproduction techniques are concerned. However, the legislature is enshrining an apparently irrefutable scientific lie-truth that undermines biological truth or the right to know one’s origins in the context of the effects of filiation. Parentage resulting from MAR is therefore part of the “neither seen nor known” model within the family. It is even more complex in the case of MAR with a third-party donor: a stranger is imposed on the extended family, upsetting the traditional rules of succession and kinship. This raises legitimate questions about the future of human beings and filiation in the face of scientific progress, and about the role of the legislator in protecting them.