Constitution of The BahamasHow the Constitution is changed7 June 2016
The 2016 constitutional referendum
Four Bills to remove the differences between men and women in the citizenship articles, and to add sex to the grounds of discrimination, were put to the voters. All four were rejected.
- Held
- 7 June 2016
- Called by
- Progressive Liberal Party government of Prime Minister Perry Christie
- Required
- Three-quarters of all members of each House, then a majority of electors voting (Article 54)
- Result
- All four questions rejected
Results
| Question | Yes | No | Share of No |
|---|---|---|---|
| Children born abroad | 32,24938.7% | 51,02261.3% | |
| Foreign spouses | 24,14828.8% | 59,71471.2% | |
| Unmarried fathers | 28,34134.1% | 54,89165.9% | |
| Discrimination on the ground of sex | 17,91921.4% | 65,69678.6% |
Valid votes, as reported after the count. Across all the questions, 69.3% of valid votes were No.
The questions
Question 1
Children born abroad
Do you approve of the Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2014? Under the proposed change to the Constitution, a child born outside of The Bahamas would, after the coming into operation of this amendment, become a Bahamian citizen at birth if either its mother or father is a citizen of The Bahamas by birth.
Article 8 would have read “father or mother” instead of “father”, so that a child born abroad to a Bahamian mother became a citizen at birth, and Article 9, which gives such a child only a right to apply between 18 and 21, would have been deleted. The change was not retroactive.
Question 2
Foreign spouses
Do you approve of the Constitution (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, 2014? Under this proposed change to the Constitution, the foreign spouse of a Bahamian citizen would, after the coming into operation of this Article, be entitled to apply for and obtain citizenship subject to satisfying: (i) existing national security or public policy considerations; and (ii) new provisions guarding against marriages of convenience.
Article 10 would have applied to “a man or woman” who marries a Bahamian, and new paragraphs would have allowed registration to be refused where the marriage had ended, was entered into to obtain citizenship, or the couple did not intend to live together, or where the applicant had a specified conviction.
- Bill
- Constitution (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, 2014
- Article
- 10
- Vote
- 24,148 Yes (28.8%), 59,714 No (71.2%)
Question 3
Unmarried fathers
Do you approve of the Constitution (Amendment) (No. 3) Bill, 2014? Under this proposed change to the Constitution, a Bahamian father of a person born out of wedlock after the coming into operation of this amendment would be able to pass his citizenship to that person subject to legal proof that he is the father.
Article 14(1), which treats a reference to the father of a child born out of wedlock as a reference to the mother, would have been replaced by a rule that the father is a man who satisfies the prescribed proof of paternity.
- Bill
- Constitution (Amendment) (No. 3) Bill, 2014
- Article
- 14
- Vote
- 28,341 Yes (34.1%), 54,891 No (65.9%)
Question 4
Discrimination on the ground of sex
Do you approve of the Constitution (Amendment) (No. 4) Bill, 2014? Under this proposed change to the constitution, it would be unlawful to discriminate based on “sex,” which would be defined as “being male or female.”
“Sex” would have been added to race, place of origin, political opinions, colour and creed in the definition of “discriminatory” in Article 26(3), and a new paragraph would have defined sex as being male or female.
- Bill
- Constitution (Amendment) (No. 4) Bill, 2014
- Article
- 26
- Vote
- 17,919 Yes (21.4%), 65,696 No (78.6%)
How it came about
In August 2012 the government appointed a Constitutional Commission chaired by Sean McWeeney to review the whole Constitution before the fortieth anniversary of Independence. Its report of July 2013 recommended, among much else, that the citizenship articles be recast in gender-neutral language and that sex be added to the grounds of discrimination in Article 26. Four Bills were tabled in July 2014, each confined to one subject so that voters could decide each separately.
The referendum was first expected in 2013, then in November 2014, and was finally held on 7 June 2016 after the Bills had passed both Houses with the three-quarters majority that Article 54 requires. The Commission ran a programme of town hall meetings, and a Yes campaign was supported by members of both main parties. Opponents argued that the fourth Bill would open the way to same-sex marriage, which its supporters denied, pointing to Article 26(4)(e), which already exempts marriage law from the discrimination clause.
What happened afterwards
Turnout was below half of the register, and every Bill was rejected by more than 60 per cent of those voting. The citizenship articles therefore still read as they did in 1973: a Bahamian man passes citizenship to a child born abroad, a Bahamian woman does not, and a foreign wife may register as a citizen while a foreign husband may not.
One of the four questions was later settled a different way. In May 2023 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council held, in Attorney General v Rolle, that a child born in The Bahamas to a Bahamian father and a foreign mother who are not married is a citizen at birth under Article 6, because that Article speaks of “either of his parents” and Article 14(1) does not displace it. The position of children born abroad to Bahamian mothers, and of foreign husbands, is unchanged.