New laws proposed for birth registration

By Steve Mkawale

It will be mandatory to register any birth of a child on Kenyan soil within three months of its occurrence, the Birth and Death Registration Bill 2011 has proposed.

The Bill further proposes that no registration of birth shall be done after five years from the date of delivery.

If enacted into law, the Bill gives only the Cabinet Secretary (minister) powers to extend the period of late registration through a notice in the Kenya Gazette.

The Bill was among five that the Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang’ received from a taskforce formed to formulate them.

The Birth and Death Registration Bill also gives responsibility for notification of birth to any person living in a house where a child is born.

But that person might not be entered in the register as a father of any child except upon production to the registrar of evidence of marriage to the mother of the child.

Currently, the law allows the parents of the child to notify the registrar of the birth of a child.

But where the father, or the mother or both parents of a child are dead, the person notifying of the birth must produce a court order for him to be registered as a father.

Officers in charge of prisons, hospitals, orphanages, military barracks and quarantine stations will be required to give notices of births that occur within their jurisdictions.

"The persons notifying the birth of a child will be required to give the prescribed particulars to the registrar or the registration agents and counter sign to confirm the authenticity of the information given," reads part of the draft Bill.

And on births of a child who is a citizen of Kenya, occurring outside the country, the person notifying of such birth must give a certificate of birth issued by appropriate authority in the foreign country.

And if the certificate of birth are not issued in the foreign country, a document by the doctor, midwife or any other person attending birth, must be produced. " And if there is a Kenya mission in the country abroad, a certificate of a member of the mission that has been certified should be issued," reads the draft law.

Also presented was a draft Bill proposing strict sanctions, including a 10-year jail term, to discourage abuse of liberal provisions on citizenship in the Constitution to abet registration of ineligible persons.

The punishment is imposed to deter abuse of the constitutional provision stipulating ‘a child found in Kenya who is, or appears to be, less than eight years, whose nationality and parents are unknown, is presumed a citizen by birth.’

"Any person who brings into Kenya, conspires or assists or facilitates the dumping or abandoning of a child with the intention of conferring citizenship on the child shall be guilty of an offence under this act and shall be liable upon conviction to a sentence of imprisonment of 10 years or a fine Sh1.5 million or both," states the Kenya Citizenship and Immigration Bill.