Registration of birth in the Population Register System

Births of Finnish citizens outside Finland must be notified to the Digital and Population Data Agency. You can also submit the notification at a Finnish embassy or send it there to be posted to the Local Register Office for registration.

Birth certificates issued by an EU country are accepted without requiring that a so-called apostille be attached to the document.

In other countries the original birth certificate or a copy of it, authenticated at a mission of Finland, must be appended to the notification. The document must be legalised and, if it has been issued in some other language than Finnish, Swedish or English, an authorised translation in one of these languages must be provided. Translations made abroad must be legalised. Translations made by an authorised translator in Finland are valid as such.

An Apostille stamp is not required for a birth certificate, which is issued by an EU country authority and a translation of the certificate is not needed if a multilingual standard form is appended to the document.

Registration of a child born in the UAE in the civil registration system

A Finnish citizen born in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) or a foreign child born in Finland is registered in the Population Information System with the following documents:

  • Completed and signed Notification of a child born abroad form. The form must be filled in carefully and must be signed by both parents
  • Photocopies of the parents' passports
  • Original birth certificate issued in the UAE, attested by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and legalised by the Embassy of Finland in Abu Dhabi

The Embassy of Finland in Abu Dhabi provides notarial services by appointment or you can deliver documents by courier for service. For more information on legalising your document at the embassy.

  • The Embassy of Finland in Abu Dhabi will legalise English-language documents issued in the UAE and Qatar that bear the local Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) attestation sticker issued after 2021.
  • Documents issued after this date must be re-certified by the MOFA before being imported into the mission.
  • If the original certificate is only in Arabic, it must be translated and attested by a translation agency and sealed together with the original document.
  • A translation sealed/pasted together with a copy of the original certificate is not sufficient.
  • For further information on UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs legalizations click here: https://www.mofa.gov.ae/en/Services/attestation 

The Embassy reception is open to customers by appointment only and if you are delivering documents by courier, please confirm our service and the necessary attachments in advance. For up-to-date guidance, please contact the Embassy after the birth of your child by emailing [email protected].

For further information https://dvv.fi/en/registration-of-a-child-born-abroad1