SINGAPORE: The Singapore government is allowing parents of different races to decide on their child’s race during registration of birth.Previously, under the city-state’s general rule, although the government did not assign race to a person, such a child would be registered as having the race of the father.
Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs Associate Prof Ho Peng Kee told parliament yesterday, the rule was revised after the government recognised that the diversity of Singapore’s racial demographic had increased in recent years, due to the inflow of immigrants and the rise in the number of locals marrying foreigners.
The new rule which came into effect on Jan 2, this year, would give parents of different races the flexibility and choice to decide how their child’s race should be recorded, he said.
Ho said the government would accept a race declaration, so long as it fell within generally accepted notions of ethnicity by lineage. For example, he said, a Caucasian-Chinese couple might decide to have their child’s race recorded as Caucasian, Chinese or Eurasian. — Bernama