The Centre for Child Law made submissions to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee of Home Affairs and Portfolio Committee of Social Development to provide a brief on, and recommendations regarding, various developments in the law regulating birth registration in South Africa. The brief seeks to provide parliamentary decision-makers with a consolidated version of the text of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 51 of 1992 (“Act”)as it currently reads, taking into consideration the latest jurisprudential development. The text of the Act has been altered significantly through 4 court judgments in the past 5 years. These judgments have declared several provisions of the Act constitutionally invalid, and have either struck them from the text or have read in additional text.
