Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) and the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Child Law (CCL) are appealing against a ruling that helped pave the way to have all children’s births in SA registered. Several groups called on government to change the rules about birth registration after a ruling by the Eastern Cape High Court (Grahamstown) that 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 more than 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.

According to TimesLIVE, they said the judgment 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.’

Full TimesLIVE report