NIRA to Manage Registration of Marriages and Licensing of Marriage Venues

The Minister of Internal Affairs has officially transferred the responsibility for administering marriage registrations and licensing marriage venues to the National Identification Registration Authority (NIRA) through Statutory Instrument Number 74 of 2024. The instrument, which was issued on September 5, 2024, took effect on September 30, 2024.

According to the document, signed by Minister Kahinda Otafire, this change is made under the powers conferred by Section 1 of the Registration of Persons (Amendment) Act, 2023. The Instrument is formally titled the Registration of Persons (Amendment) Act, 2024 (Commencement) Instrument, 2024, and it emphasizes that the new responsibilities came into force on September 30, 2024.

This statutory instrument finalizes the amendments to the Registration of Persons Act, 2015, which reassigns the mandate for registering natural persons—including birth, death, and marriage—from the Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) to NIRA.

The decision is rooted in a Cabinet directive from February 22, 2021, aimed at merging, streamlining, and rationalizing government agencies and expenditures. This initiative seeks to enhance service delivery, minimize functional duplication, and reduce the costs associated with managing various agencies.

The Cabinet recommended transferring the responsibility for marriage laws to NIRA to consolidate the registration of all natural persons—from birth, identification, marriage, to death—under one authority. With this new role, NIRA will also be tasked with collecting non-tax revenues related to these registration processes and will need to establish the necessary structures to manage its expanded responsibilities effectively.