‘Children without birth certificates at risk of statelessness’ – say legal advocacy groups

Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) and the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Child Law (CCL) is appealing against a ruling that helped pave the way to have all children’s births in South Africa registered.

HeraldLIVE reported that several groups called on government to change the rules about birth registration after a ruling by the Grahamstown High Court in July this year. That court ruled some of the rules that impacted single fathers and couples‚ where either one or both were foreigners‚ were unconstitutional.

The case was brought by a Grahamstown father who was barred by officials from registering the birth of his child.

The Centre of Child Law and LHR presented over 40 instances in the case where fathers could not register the birth of their children because their mothers were absent.

“In many of the cases‚ the child’s mother was missing‚ had abandoned the child or was deceased – leaving only the child’s father to register their birth. These fathers are unable to register the births of their children because of the impediments in the law‚” they said in a joint statement on Thursday.

They said the judgment by the Grahamstown High Court helped in ensuring that the births of all children are registered‚ but “a critical opportunity to more comprehensively improve access to birth registration was missed”.

In their appeal‚ LHR and CCL want section 10 of the Birth and Deaths Registration Act to be declared unconstitutional.

“This means that the Act and the regulation which was declared unconstitutional by the High Court do not speak to each other – as the Act still requires a child’s mother to be present during birth registration processes.”

CCL attorney Anjuli Maistry said: “Children without birth certificates are therefore at great risk of exclusion from education‚ as well as from accessing social assistance. In fact‚ the Centre is aware of hundreds of cases of children that are unable to access school solely as a result of lack of a birth certificate. Children without birth certificates are also at risk of statelessness‚ as well as generational statelessness.”