On 5 March, the National Assembly discussed the issue of adopting the draft law on Making Amendments and Addenda to the RA Law on Civil Acts presented by the “Bright Armenia” Faction in the second reading.

Faction MP Armen Yeghiazaryan presented the draft, stating that the birth certificate will provided the child’s name, patronymic, surname, and henceforth gender will be indicated as well, with the mutual consent of the parents as well as nationality, place of birth and time.

The justification of the draft states that the law on birth certificates of citizens of the Republic of Armenia does not provide indicating the gender as mandatory. As a result, citizens face a number of problems, especially in foreign countries. In addition, there may be other problems when it is not possible to understand the gender of the child by name alone. Iinformation about the gender of the child is mentioned in German and French birth certificates, it is also practiced in many US states and many other countries. Failure to mention gender in some birth certificates is generally a problem, as female and male surnames (e.g., Russian: Sokolov and Sokolova) are changed according to the language, and sometimes also the name (e.g., Michel and Michelle / Michèle in French).

It is therefore suggested that the simplest solution to this problem is to provide a special field in birth certificates and complete the relevant information on the gender of the child.