Registration of birth in the Population Register System
Births of Finnish citizens outside Finland must be notified to the Digital and Population Data Agency(Link to another website.) (Opens New Window). 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(Link to another website.) (Opens New Window) 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(Link to another website.) (Opens New Window) 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 in South Africa
Registering is done by the Finnish Digital and Population Data Services Agency (DVV). Primarily contact the DVV directly about the registration. See the directions from their website(Link to another website.) (Opens New Window).
If you cannot register directly to the DVV, the registration documents can be submitted via the Embassy in Pretoria. There will be a fee of 30 euros according to the Decree of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs on Fees for Services Produced by the Foreign Service. Registering a birth in South Africa to Finland requires the following:
-a fully completed and signed registration form
-the original and Apostille legalised full birth certificate issued by the local authorities.
-copies of the parents’ passports
- payment receipt
Finnish passport for the child can only be applied once the DVV has confirmed the registration and sent the identity number.