How to register a birth in Dubai – the easy way
Amid the life-changing upheaval of welcoming a new baby into the world, is the dawning realisation you have a whole new world of admin to deal with! One of the first key tasks is to register the birth of your baby and obtain a birth certificate. Without it, your baby won’t be able to leave the country, and in effect won’t officially exist! In Dubai, after your baby is born you have 30 days to register the birth. But it’s worth preparing beforehand as there are quite a few documents you need to have.
The documents you need
- Original birth notification. When your child is born, the hospital will notify the Dubai Health Authority of the birth. Within 48 hours the Health Authority issues a birth notification to the hospital, which they will pass on to you. This costs you nothing.
- Original passport and valid UAE residency visa for both parents (plus photocopies)
- Original Emirates ID for both parents (plus photocopies).
- Attested marriage certificate of the parents (must be translated into English or Arabic). The attested marriage certificate is the most tricky of the documents to get, and can take a few weeks, so it’s better to arrange it before your child is born. Full details are available here. In short, if you got married outside of the UAE your marriage certificate will need to go through three stages:
- Attestation by the Foreign Ministry in the country in which you got married.
- Attestation in the UAE by the embassy of the country in which you got married.
- Attestation by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dubai.
The two ways to register a birth in Dubai
Option 1 – do it yourself
It’s perfectly possible to register a birth in Dubai by yourself, crisscrossing between various hospitals and ministries with all your documents. But ask yourself if you want to spend the first few days of your child’s life in government buildings, queuing to have documents processed. There’s a few hoops to jump through, which can be an unwanted hassle when you have a new baby who has taken over your life!
Option 2 – pay someone else to do it for you
Being Dubai, there are companies who will take away the hassle and do a lot of the legwork for you. And at such a busy time of your life I totally recommend using one.
I recommend babystepsdubai.com as I found them to be efficient and professional. They charge AED600 in total and the process takes three days. Even if you did the whole thing yourself, the various fees, translations and attestations would still cost about AED300. For the time saved, I think the extra cost is money well spent.
Assuming you choose option 2, the process is straightforward. Simply get your documents ready and give Baby Steps Dubai a call. Someone from the company will come to your address to collect all your documents and the fee, and then tour the various authorities on your behalf, submitting the paperwork and obtaining the birth certificate for you.
After three days they will return with your baby’s local Arabic birth certificate (attested by the Ministry of Health) and an English translation of the birth certificate (attested by the Ministry Of Health and Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
Your attested birth certificate is officially recognised and can be used overseas.
Next steps
Once you have your birth certificate, you can apply for a passport and UAE residency visa for your baby. Also, don’t forget to tell your health insurance provider to add your child to your health insurance. Those vaccinations soon add up!
Legal Translation of Birth Certificate of English to Arabic is a final step before you are going to apply for your dependent’s visa, especially, if the dependent is under the age of 18 years of age. LTD is pleased to offer the services of “sworn translation of your birth certificates,” which is an ultimate contribution in the process of obtaining your child’s formal and official visa. We have professionally and largely contributed our translation services for the obtaining of an “official translation of birth certificate,” to the expatriate community, which has not only helped the members of this community receive their child’s visa and having it officially issued, but also assists in the updating of their family status in the UAE official government records.