Many people are concerned when they receive their new Unabridged Birth Certificate (also called a full birth certificate) from Home Affairs and see that the title simply says “Birth Certificate” rather than “Unabridged Birth Certificate” as it used to in the past. The good news is that they have nothing to worry about.

before the 1 December 2016 Unabridged Birth Certificates had the full title of “Unabridged Birth Certificate on it”, but on the 1 December 2016 Home Affairs made a change and replaced the old Unabridged Birth Certificate with what they call a Full Birth Certificate. This has the exact same information as the old style Unabridged Birth Certificate but it just says “Birth Certificate” as the title and excludes the “Unabridged” part.

Home Affairs Unabridged Birth Certificate and Full Birth Certificate comparison — A comparison between the old style Unabridged Birth Certificate and the post 1 December 2016 Full Birth Certificate. Functionally they contain the same information and are used for the same purpose

This new style Full Birth Certificate is exactly the same as the old Unabridged Birth Certificate and contains the same information, except for the small change to the title. We refer in orders to this new certificate as the Unabridged Birth Certificate as people are used to that term, and confusingly, the Department of Home Affairs order forms still refer to Unabridged Birth Certificates when choosing your selection.

What information does a full or Unabridged Birth Certificate have on it?

These certificates contain the full details of your birth, including your ID number, date of birth and place and country of birth, as well as the details of both parents, including their full names and dates of birth, and place and country or birth (if the parents were born in a foreign country then sometimes the place and country will be written with just the country’s information.

The parent’s details can have an ID number or no ID number depending on what is on your original birth record and wha rpat year you were born. They can also have different date formats for the birthday (dd/mm/yyy or dd.mm.yyyy) or even just the age of the parent at the time of your birth. It all depends on what was entered and captured off the vault birth register.

The certificate also specifically records any endorsements that were made on the birth certificate.

Before 2013 Children were issued with a short form Abridged Birth Certificate at birth, but after 2013 the full details are computerised and a Full or Unabridged Birth Certificate is issued at birth and can under most normal circumstances be issued and printed on the spot when a replacement is applied for at Home Affairs. This is an extremely welcome development and will become even more useful in the future as more and more citizens end up on this system.

For people born before 2013 the Vault birth records have to be retrieved from the archives before the data can be captured and a certificate printed at the Home Affairs branch. This can lead to data capturing errors on the certificate and huge delays as their is a backlog in retrieving these records from the archives.

We at Embassy Services would be more than happy to arrange your Unabridged Birth Certificate and to apostille or legalise it for further use overseas. Contact us today to see how we can help you.