11 Oct 2023

The Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs, in collaboration with the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA), is holding consultations to review the Birth and Death Registration Act. 

Chief legal advisor to the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs, Mr Thamsanqa Silitshena said in an interview yesterday that the consultations were meant to get feedback from the society on the challenges they encountered when registering births and deaths. 

Mr Silitshena said the exercise would provide opportunity for stakeholders to come up with suggestions that would make registration easier. 

He said the exercise would address a raft of issues of concern. Among those was the birth and death of Batswana in a foreign country, where that country could not or did not provide a certificate, he said. 

Mr Silitshena added registration of such births and deaths at home, would go a long way in helping Botswana to have accurate statistics for its population register, which was crucial for development planning. Another issue was that of change of names where ordinary citizens had to go through a torturous process that included applying to the High Court for an order permitting them to make such changes, he said. 

“That requirement creates a huge burden for many citizens who may not have the means to afford the costs associated with making applications to the High Court,” he said, adding in some cases the distance that someone had to travel to access the High Court was prohibitive. 

The proposed amendment therefore sought to delegate that function to the Magistrates’ courts, which had a presence in every district. Mr Silitshena said the current Act did not prescribe a DNA test for persons whose citizenship was in doubt. 

That, he said, was a problem common along border villages where a child may be born to a foreign parent who died before the child was of any understanding, only for him or her to be rejected by the registration process when of age to acquire the national identity card. “DNA testing will provide conclusive evidence as the person’s citizenship. 

It will also assist in reducing the numbers of stateless people,” he said. The exercise would also deal with the issue of gender markers, where a child was born with indeterminate sex classification, which may become apparent at a later stage. 

The amendment therefore sought to have other markers besides male and female, he said. Mr Silitshena said consultations would bring in participants from the civil society, village elders and authorities, councilors, and parliamentarians. ends