Birth, marriage and death certificates from abroad

Where Seychelles papers come from

Every Seychelles birth, marriage and death certificate is held and issued by the Civil Status Office, part of Immigration and Civil Status. Living abroad does not cut you off from them. You can request a certified extract directly from Civil Status, or route the request through a Seychelles mission or consulate, which can also certify copies of documents you already hold.

Registering something that happened abroad

The events of a Seychellois life abroad, a marriage, the birth of a child, can be brought back into the Seychelles record. Registering your child's foreign birth is the practical first half of claiming their citizenship by descent. A foreign marriage can be registered so that a name change flows cleanly through your documents. Ask ICS or your consulate which form and which supporting papers they need for your country, because the exact requirements vary with where the event took place.

Legalisation and the apostille

A certificate is only useful if the country reading it will trust it. That is what legalisation does. A document issued in one country often has to be authenticated before another country's authorities will accept it, and this runs in both directions: a foreign birth certificate you want Seychelles to recognise, and a Seychelles certificate you need a foreign authority to accept.

Many countries use the Hague apostille, a single standardised stamp. Where a country is not part of that system the older chain of legalisation applies, through the foreign ministry and often an embassy. Before you post anything, ask the authority that will receive the document exactly which form of authentication it wants, and ask your consulate whether it can carry out or start the process. Getting this wrong is the commonest reason a citizenship or civil-status file stalls.

Certified translations

If a document is not in English or French, expect to provide a certified translation alongside the original. Keep the original and the translation together through the whole chain of legalisation, because a stamp on one is not a stamp on the other.

Who to ask

For civil-status requests and the exact legalisation route, contact Immigration and Civil Status (tel +248 4293636, m.laporte@gov.sc) or your nearest Seychelles consulate. For what a consulate can and cannot certify, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sets out its consular assistance.