By: Staff Writer
May 5, 2023
The Privy Council in the United Kingdom sided with The Bahamas’s Chief Justice on a major citizenship case that now paves the way for Bahamian men to pass their citizenship on to their children born of foreign mothers.
The highest court in the land affirmed Chief Justice’s Ian Winder’s ruling on the case of Attorney General of The Bahamas who was on appeal v Shannon Tyreck Rolle and others, who were seeking to affirm that their children, who were born to unwed foreign mothers, do in fact have the right to Bahamian citizenship at birth and do not have to wait until their 18th birthday to apply for citizenship.
The landmark ruling paves the way for the Philip Davis administration to amend the Bahamas Nationality Act to further equalise access to citizenship, an objective it said it would pursue once the Privy Council rendered its judgement on the narrower citizenship issue.
The attorney general had appealed the Court of Appeal’s decision with the current and former attorneys general both taking the position that the highest court needed to settle the matter once and for all.
Shannon Tyreck Rolle and four others were respondents in this case.
At the heart of the matter was the interpretation of two articles of the constitution.
Article 6 states: “Every person born in The Bahamas after 9th July 1973 shall become a citizen of The Bahamas at the date of his birth if at that date either of his parents is a citizen of The Bahamas.”
Article 14(1) states: “Any reference in this chapter to the father of a person shall, in relation to any person born out of wedlock other than a person legitimated before 10th July 1973, be construed as a reference to the mother of that person.”
Justice Winder found that the use of “parents” in Article 6 was not an economy of drafting but intended to convey “the biological father or mother of the child unaffected by the artificial construct envisioned by Article 14(1)”.
In his view, it was ultimately not a question of counting words but of meaning, the Privy Council noted.
The Attorney General’s Office responded to the ruling and said it would abide by the Privy Council’s ruling on the matter and further noted that this also paves the way for ensuring citizenship rights for all in The Bahamas.
Currently, an unwed Bahamian woman cannot pass on her Bahamian citizenship to a child born of a foreign man.