Authenticating Your Documents At DFA Philippines Before Traveling Abroad - Red Ribbon Vs Apostille.

Incase you are travelling abroad from the Philippines and will need to make use of your documents at your destination country i.e documents that originate from the Philippines, especially government-issued documents, you may want to authenticate these documents.

Normally, if you are in the Philippines, this process happens at the DFA or Department of Foreign Affairs and was popularly known as 'Red Ribbon'. However, it is important to note that the Red Ribbon method for authenticating documents in the Philippines has been receded in favor of the new method of authentication called 'Apostille certificate' since June 2019.

The Apostille certificate while replacing 'Red Ribbon' isn't accepted as a form of authentication in all countries as not all countries have gone into treaty to accept this form of authentication just yet.

According to the DFA in the Philippines, they have accepted the Apostille method for authentication of documents to streamline the process of authentication. Unlike with the 'Red Ribbon', when your document has the Apostille certificate, it no longer needs to be legalized by a consular in the destination country.

This means that the Apostille certificate is more convenient for travellers, however, it is still limited because not all countries has acceded to this form of document-authentication just yet.

Here, you will find a list of countries that use the Apostille form of document-authentication and you can more on the topic at hand:
https://dfa.gov.ph/dfa-news/dfa-relea...

Edit:
According to the DFA, for countries that aren't on the list of Apostille-contracting nations, the Red Ribbon form of authentication can still be used like before:
https://dfa.gov.ph/dfa-news/statement...

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