Citizenship Not By Birth Certificate

Foreigners born in Ghana are eligible to be issued with Ghanaian birth certificates, the Births and Deaths Registry has stated.

It, however, explained that the issuance of birth certificates to people of foreign parentage did not confer Ghanaian nationality status on those people.

A Principal Assistant Registrar of the Births and Deaths Registry, Mr Kingsley Asare Addo, who made this known to graphic.com.gh, explained that the birth certificates issued to foreigners only provided evidence of age and parentage, not nationality.

There are allegations of an upsurge in the number of people living in border towns seeking birth certificates.

The trend has been linked to the biometric voters registration exercise scheduled to begin on Saturday which requires the presentation of identification documents, such as birth certificates, driving licences, passports, National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) cards, old voters ID cards and national identification cards.

Allegations are also rife that some foreigners are infiltrating the system to secure Ghanaian birth certificates for the purposes of taking part in the voters registration exercise.

Responding, Mr Addo said the management of the registry would investigate the allegations to find out their veracity or otherwise.

He, however, indicated that once a foreigner was born in Ghana, he or she was eligible to be issued with a Ghanaian birth certificate, but he was quick to add that a foreigner holding a Ghanaian birth certificate needed to go through the requisite legal procedure to secure Ghanaian nationality.

He said once a foreigner was able to prove that he or she was born in Ghana, it was incumbent on the registry to issue him or her with a birth certificate.

He, however, admitted that the situation in border towns was a major challenge, given the closely knit relationship between people across the borders.

He said inter-marriages, the culture and communalism in the border towns made it difficult to differentiate between foreigners and Ghanaians.

Mr Addo said as a means of addressing that challenge, the Births and Deaths Registry had instituted community registration centres, especially in the border towns, with the support of chiefs and opinion leaders, to compile baseline data.

He said the essence was to ensure that the community members, who knew one another very well, would help differentiate between Ghanaians and foreigners living in the border towns.

“It is proving very wonderful because we have local residents who have information and manage information,” he noted.

On the upsurge in people in border towns seeking birth certificates, Mr Addo said it was normal for people to rush for birth certificates for the purposes of acquiring passports, seeking enlistment into the security services and admission to professional training institutions.