Your Certification works in 117 countries.

An Apostille (pronounced “ah-po-steel”) is a French word meaning certification.  

An Apostille is simply the name for a specialized certificate, issued by the Secretary of State. The Apostille is attached to your original document to verify it is legitimate and authentic so it will be accepted in one of the other countries who are members of the Hague Apostille Convention.


Download below file

CONVENTION ABOLISHING THE REQUIREMENT OF LEGALISATION FOR FOREIGN PUBLIC DOCUMENTS.pdf

WHEREVER YOU GO

you can work as a certificated English teacher

  • 117 countries accept

    Apostille is a official promise between 117 countries, they don’t ask an additional authentication for paper from member countries.

  • No expiry date

    Okanagan TESOL is designed to stucture your knowledge and train your teaching skills for other language speakers. You are the teacher.

  • Authority with CANADA

    TESOL program made by Okanagan College had official authorization of Canada Federal & British Columbia province government.

Purpose of the Convention

The Apostille Convention facilitates the circulation of public documents executed in one Contracting Party to the Convention and to be produced in another.1 It replaces the cumbersome and often costly formalities of a full legalisation process (chain certification) with the mere issuance of an Apostille. The Convention has also proven very useful for countries that do not require foreign public documents to be legalised, or that do not know the concept of legalisation in their domestic law: the citizens in these countries enjoy the benefits of the Convention whenever they intend to produce a domestic public document in another Contracting Party which, for its part, requires authentication of the document concerned.

Public documents

The Convention applies only to public documents. As the Convention does not define “public document”, the “public” nature of a document is left to be determined by the law of the place where the document originates (i.e. the State of origin).2 Nonetheless, Article 1 provides some guidance as to types of documents that can be considered “public”. These examples include documents emanating from an authority or official connected with a court or tribunal of the Contracting Party (including documents issued by an administrative, constitutional or ecclesiastical court or tribunal, a public prosecutor, a clerk or a process-server); administrative documents; notarial acts; and official certificates which are placed on documents signed by persons in their private capacity, such as official certificates recording the registration of a document or the fact that it was in existence on a certain date and official and notarial authentications of signatures. The main examples of public documents for which Apostilles are issued in practice include birth, marriage and death certificates; extracts from commercial registers and other registers; patents; court rulings; notarial acts and attestations of signatures; academic diplomas issued by public institutions.3 Apostilles may also be issued for certified copies of a public document. Although the Convention does not strictly apply to documents executed by diplomatic or consular agents or to administrative documents dealing directly with commercial or customs operations, these Article 1(3) exclusions are to be interpreted extremely narrowly.

Who may issue an Apostille and how to verify the origin of an Apostille?

Apostilles may only be issued by a Competent Authority designated by the Contracting Party from which the public document emanates.4 The Permanent Bureau (Secretariat) of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) does not issue Apostilles.

The Apostille is placed by the Competent Authority on the public document itself or on an allonge, and should conform as closely as possible to the Model annexed to the Convention. In addition, each Competent Authority is required to keep a Register in which it records the Apostilles it has issued. The Registers, which may be accessed by any interested person, are an essential tool to combat fraud and verify the origin of an Apostille in case of doubt.

The effect of an Apostille

The only effect of an Apostille is to certify the authenticity of the signature, the capacity in which the person signing the document has acted, and where appropriate, the identity of the seal or stamp which the document bears. The Apostille does not relate to the content of the underlying document itself (i.e., the apostillised public document).

Monitoring of the Convention

The practical operation of the Apostille Convention was last reviewed by a Special Commission in 2016. The Special Commission has reiterated at several meetings that the spirit and letter of the Convention ‘do not constitute an obstacle to the usage of modern technology’ and that the Convention’s application and operation can be further improved by relying on such technology. This finding was confirmed by the 2016 International Forum on the e-APP.