hi,
gruezi everybody.i am new to this forum and have a question (actually more of an apprehension). My wife has just given birth to a baby boy in switzerland and for the baby's birth certificate i was asked by hospital authorities to submit me and my wife's auslander cards, passports and marriage certificate(all in original) which i promptly did. Now i recvd a letter from gemeinde asking me to further submit me and my wife's (birth certificates). To be honest the country from where i am , nobody made birth ceriticates 30 years back and now somehow i suddenly need it or else as mentioned in the letter from gemeinde my son will not be issued a birth ceriticate which i feel is quite wierd. how else would i be able to make a passport and other important docs. has anybody faced this problem before. i definitely cannot get a birth ceritificate for me and my wife after 30 years or so. any suggestion/feedback would be much appreciated. many thanks.

Yes, you need these documents. This wasn't always the case, but there was a new law a couple of years ago and so now the parents' birth certificates are required. I remember ordering them from back in Illinois during the weeks before our youngest daughter was born.

Perhaps your government can generate something like a birth certificate for you on the basis of your passport?

They wouldn't have accepted the old Birth certificate anyway as the rules have just changed: they now require certificates that are no older than 6 months.. so not only are you in the thick of it with new baby, lack of sleep, tons of visitors you have to contend with paper work coming out of your ears.
The poor woman that had to ring and tell me the Birth certificates we had sent were not valid and they needed us to get new ones, had to listen to me rant and rave for ages and she did so with impressive patience and good grace(must be part of their training listening to exhausted parents). I finally had to calm down and accept the inevitable.. but Bloody Nora, the paper work with a new born goes on forever.
Your country or community where you were born has no records of Birth, Deaths, Marriages? are you sure? If not you'll have to get on to to your country's embassy and hopefully they can help you sort it out and get some paper work that the Gemeinde will accept.

I suggest you call your country's embassy in Switzerland. They should be familiar with what documents are required and how you can obtain them.

i come from war torn country (with no official infrastructure) and a while back i needed some offical documents (birth certificates & other stuff). my country does not have an embassy so i went to their mission in geneva and got my documents from them and they were accepted by the swiss authorities.

maybe u can try going to your embassy/mission for more information on what to do, or perhabs travel back home and get those documents from the courts in your country.

The best thing to do is to call your country's embassy or mission in Switzerland. They should be used to this and have some kind of documents that will be acceptable.

When I got married here, they were looking for confirmation that I was free to marry from my community in Ireland - and since this does not exist I was at a loss as to what to do until I contacted the Irish Embassy in Bern, who told me that they had a "Form" to fix this! A couple of minutes at the embassy and I had all I needed - a nice parchment in German with a gold harp and seal on it.

Good luck,

Jim.