Govt. moves apace with amendments for child adoption, birth and death registration bills

Aug 04, 2021 News

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Kaieteur News – The People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) administration is moving apace with efforts to amend several pieces of legislation governing the adoption of children, birth and death registration. The Adoption of Children (Amendment) Bill as well as the Birth and Death Registration Amendment Bill came up for debate as part of the order of business at the sitting of the National Assembly yesterday.

The bills were each read for the second and third time in the Assembly respectively, each by their subject Minister. The presentations received overwhelming support from those on the government side of the House.
In her presentation of the Adoption of Children Amendment Bill 2021, Minister of Human Services and Social Security, Dr. Vindhya Persaud, noted the purpose of amendment is to give the Hague Convention on the adoption of children (an international treaty) the force of law in Guyana.
She noted that adoption amendments would allow for international best practice and procedures to be used in the process of inter-country adoption of Guyanese children.
“Guyana like many other countries has its adoption laws but by bringing it into conformity with the Hague Convention; a corporate respect and protection for inter-country adoption is made,” Dr. Persaud said, adding that the amendments will make way for an ease of the legal hurdles associated with the international adoption of children.
Dr. Persaud noted too that the Hague Convention helps safeguard against abduction and the illegal sale of children. She said that there are entire sections of the bill that will address those issues and deal with those safeguards.
Dr. Persaud’s presentation was supported by several members of the government including Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, SC, who in his remarks, noted that “the purpose of developing the Hague Convention was to create a multilateral instrument which would define certain substantive principles for the protection of children, establish a legal framework of co-operation between authorities in the States of origin and in the receiving States.”
According to the Attorney General, the Adoption of Children (Amendment) Bill represents the government’s commitment to ensuring that any system involving children has as its guiding principle the best interests of those children.

Moreover, he noted that given that the world has changed with the increase in migration, “therefore there is greater need for reform of our legislative framework to ensure that children are protected.”
“As our Constitution recognises in Article 38B, “the best interest of the child shall be the primary consideration…in all matters concerning children” and more specifically, as it relates to adoption, Article 38C states that “the State shall ensure that adoption of a child takes place only if that adoption would be in the best interests of the child.”
To this end, Nandlall said government is also drafting new legislation to counter people smuggling.
“We have a new trafficking Bill that will be brought to the Parliament that has in it several provisions that will go hand-in-hand here with the provisions against transnational smuggling,” he said.
Further in this regard, Nandlall said that the Bill amendments of the Adoption of Children Act, Cap. 46:04 is consistent with the fundamental purpose and intention of the Hague Convention.
Guyana became a state party to the Convention on June 1, 2019, joining Haiti and St. Kitts as the only CARICOM nation to be a contracting party to the Convention.
As of this year, Nandlall noted the Hague Convention has over 100 Contracting Parties, including United States of America, United Kingdom, India, Albania, Australia, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Fiji, France, Ireland, Lithuania, Ghana and Zambia.
Meanwhile in his presentation of the Birth and Death Registration Amendment Bill, Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn, noted the amendment would help to eliminate the troubles of those who experience difficulty obtaining birth certificates. He noted that the amendments will also help to safeguard against fraud and fraudulent practices used in the issuance of birth certificates.
According to Benn, “the amendments relate to strengthening the process and measures in which persons can validly govern birth certificates… this will expedite the process of persons getting birth certificates.”
“The amendments provide a simpler pathway and one with integrity, for the registration of birth and deaths,” the Minister added.
Speaking in support of the proposed amendments, the Attorney General noted inter alia, that the current Section 43(2) provides for the correction of wrong entries in a birth or death registration form.
The amendment to Section 43(2) clarifies the type of errors that the subsection governs by substituting “any error” with the words “any minor clerical error.” Nandlall stressed that the procedure set out in Section 43(2) to correct the erroneous entry is deficient as it empowers the magistrate to direct the Registrar General, the custodian of the registration forms, to correct the entry without providing for the magistrate to hear the Registrar.
He noted that directing the Registrar without hearing him is a serious breach of the rule of law. As such, Nandlall said that the amendment to Section 43(2) corrects this deficiency. “It expressly provides for the Registrar to be heard before the magistrate makes his decision on whether the error in question is genuine,” added the Attorney General.

 

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