Media Center

Press Release


OAS and Paraguay Announce Positive Results in Civil Registration Campaign in Border Areas

  February 22, 2013

The Organization of American States (OAS) and the Ministry of Justice and Labor of Paraguay today presented the results of the mass civil registration campaign in the border areas of the country, carried out in the context of the initiatives to promote the right to identity that the hemispheric institution conducts across the hemisphere.

The project, which was developed with the support of the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GIZ) in the departments of Alto Paraguay and Boquerón, has a gender focus and an emphasis on indigenous communities, and concluded with the registration of 8184 people, with the resulting production of documentation, and delivery of 3,701 birth certificates, which amounts to 97 percent of the proposed goal.

As part of the project, the OAS signed a strategic alliance with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) to develop awareness in the field, through four informative campaigns on registration processes and thirteen workshops on awareness and communication on the importance of having an identity. Additionally, five letters of commitment were signed to facilitate the exchange of information and procedures, internally and externally, between the departments of Alto Paraguay and Boqueron and the production of the first "Strategic Civil Registration Plan of Paraguay," which was approved by institutional authorities.

The ceremony in which results were presented was attended by senior officials of the Executive and Judicial powers of Paraguay, departmental representatives of Alto Paraguay and Boquerón, and representatives from cooperating agencies. On behalf of the OAS, the Coordinator of the Program for Universal Civil Identity in the Americas (PUICA-OAS), of the Department for Effective Public Management, Steven Griner, attended the event.

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

Reference: E-060/13