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IX Meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Council for Civil Registration, Identity and Vital Statistics (CLARCIEV)

The Ninth Meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Council for Civil Registration, Identity and Vital Statistics (CLARCIEV) came to an end in the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador. The meeting brought together 17 Directors of Vital Records in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as international experts, who discussed criteria for the defense of the right to identity in the region.

The meeting’s aim was to analyze successful practices in citizen registration and the fight against under-registry. In this occasion, issues related to transparency, technology, innovation, under-registry and interoperability were discussed. Moreover, there were keynote presentations, workshops, report analysis by commissions, and a presentation of results by country.

The Coordinator of the Universal Civil Identity Program in the Americas (PUICA), within the Department for Effective Public Management of the Secretariat of Political Affairs of the Organization of American States (OAS), Steven Griner, highlighted the progress made, on a regional level, regarding access to identification services. In this context, he stated that in the past six years, the under-registry rate for children under five years of age, was reduced from 18% to 10%, which is far from figures in other regions like the Middle East, Asia and Africa, which are on the order of 23 to 62%.

The OAS official stated that the goal for 2015 is zero under-registries, taking into account the challenge that currently, each year in the Americas, there are on average 1.3 million births that are not properly included in the civil registries.

Also, the president of CLARCIEV, Alberto Alonso y Coria, invited the assisting countries to strengthen the Council and thanked the German Cooperation supports as well as the OAS which holds the executive secretariat.

For its part, the General Assembly took place. Its Member States representatives discussed and approved the amendments to its charters. Consequently, the Presidency’s report, the Executive Secretariat’s and the country reports, were approved. Once the formalities had been complied with, the agenda moved on to the election of the new President and the 5 new CLARCIEV Vice-presidents. The main designation was given to Jorge Yrivarren, national head of the National Registry of Identification and Civil State of Peru. Furthermore, the vice-presidencies were as follows: 1st Uruguay, 2nd El Salvador, 3rd Mexico, 4th Colombia, and 5th Guatemala. The Assembly also approved the Dominican Republic to host the X Meeting of CLARCIEV.