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OAS Supported Guatemala in Verifying More than 450,000 Identity Documents and Updating its Electoral Registry

  January 30, 2015

The Organization of American States (OAS) concluded the implementation of the project "Strengthening Citizen Identification Systems of the National Registry of Persons (RENAP) and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE)" in Guatemala, ahead of the general elections to be held in September. For the first time, citizens will be able to vote using only the Personal Identity Document.

As a result of the project, Guatemala’s electoral registry is both updated and more inclusive. This initiative will allow more than 450,000 previously unregistered citizens to exercise their right to vote in the upcoming elections. Furthermore, the OAS technical team in charge of the project implemented procedures and computer programs that will allow the institutions to continue increasing the number of eligible voters.

Following the findings of this project and with the support of the OAS, RENAP is continuing to update the registration information to make it easier for those who have not yet obtained identifications to do so.

The project of the Secretariat of Political Affairs of the OAS was jointly implemented by the Program for Universal Civil Registry in the Americas (PUICA) of the Department for Effective Public Management and the Technical Cooperation Section of the Department for Electoral Cooperation and Observation, with financial support from the Government of Canada.

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: E-021/15