A bill aiming at re-establishing the existing Document Registration and Authentication Office (DARO) was tabled to the Ethiopian House of Peoples Representatives on October 39, 2015, according to The Reporter.
The draft Proclamation cited as ‘Authentication and Registration Proclamation’ proposes to re-establish DARO as an institution both at federal and regional levels of government for “effective synchronization among all the institutions throughout the country.”
The preamble reads “it has become necessary to amend the existing laws…to create transparent relations between authentication and registration institutions and supervising improperly certified documents and to enable to have efficient economic and social relations among persons as well as to make the procedures among persons as well as to make the procedures predictable and thereby to create one economic community.”
Accordingly, an appropriate institution shall be established b regulation to nationally coordinate and support the authentication and registration activities, to organize and keep a national data base for the authenticated and registered documents, article five of the draft proclamation states.
The bill also permits regional governments to form Authentication and Registration Institutions to execute the proclamation. Considering the regions objective realities, structure of the institution shall be determined by the respective regions.
Nonetheless, these regional institutions should be uniform with the national document authentication and registration system.
Improperly authenticated and registered documents are among the reasons that compelled the Ethiopian government to revise the existing proclamation. The draft proclamation empowers the institutions to suspend improperly authorized and registered documents, made deliberately, by negligence of authenticating officers or through forgery.
Following the first round deliberations, the parliament has sent the bill for further review to the Legal and Justice Administration Standing Committee.
Source: The Reporter
