Accidental birth in a non Schengen country. What next?
I’m on vacation in Türkiya and wonder: what happens when let’s say a pregnant woman goes on vacation and for whatever reason gives birth there.
How can she take the newborn back to her country? Need to prepare all the papers in the embassy or there’s some special procedure for such cases so the paper work can be done in a country she resides normally?
Depends on the citizenship rules of the particular countries involved (jus sanguinis vs. jus soli and details thereof).
If a mother from a jus sanguinis country gives birth in a jus soli country the kid might have dual citizenship. In the opposite situation, the kid might theoretically be born stateless, although I'm pretty sure actual nationality laws make exceptions to prevent that in practice.
For reference:
I think most jus soli countries also have jus sanguinis
No biggie.
Hopefully the mother is insured with a proper assistance company,for them that's actually daily business. I had multiple calls when we were tasked with flying home a mom and preterm babies or two. One with neither mom and dad knowing beforehand a pregnancy existed.(that was kind of funny, though,as both had a medical background and were pretty cool about it)
From the document side of things for the industrial nations and the more developed destinations it is usually also no problem - first a local certificate of the birth is required,the closest embassy/consulate is contacted and emergency travel documents are created. As the old children's passport have been phased out by virtually all countries are regular provisionary passport is granted (that is not printed abroad but filled out by the embassy/consulate) and you are ready to go.
Only intermittent stops/layovers can be a problem sometimes, especially in some countries (US....) so with a professional assistance company one takes care to avoid these. Furthermore some countries do not trust birth certificates from some countries (e.g. due to a high number of surrogate motherhoods) and may demand further proof of the motherhood - e.g. medical records from antenatal care back home or a medical certificate of a recent birth by one of the embassies trusted doctors. But these problems can usually be solved easily.
Babies can get a passport from day 1. Bring the local birth certificate to the consulate and get a passport. It may even be possible to get an emergency one (but I doubt many mother and kids are deemed able to travel internationally within the first 1-2 weeks)
That depends on a country. For Polish consulate it takes few days just to convert the local certificate to Polish one and get PESEL. Then and only then they order a passport that’s being printed in Poland.
Emergency passport would do here tho. Still I’d expect few days at minimum to talk to all those people.
Looking up the terms “jus soli” and “jus sanguinis” might be of interest to you. Basically it’s different for different countries.
All Schengen countries are blood based citizenship, so no matter what’s the case in Turkey the kid got a mothers citizenship the moment it’s born.
IIRC the mother needs her own proof of citizenship and proof of birth for the infant.
So you can cross the border with a proof of birth only? No special agreement with the inbound country?
This is a really good question. Today I learned something.
She'll need to work with the home country to get baby issued appropriate citizenship and identity documents, but just to travel home? Birth cert and mother's docs should be enough.