- Español
- English
Secretariat for Strengthening Democracy (SSD)
Strengthening Democracy in the Hemisphere
Universal Civil Identity Program in the Americas (PUICA)
LINES OF ACTION
From 2010 to the present, PUICA has implemented projects in a total of 17 Member States of Central and South America and the Caribbean in five strategic areas. Each of these strategic areas responds to one or more of the specific measures enumerated in Resolution 2362.
Hospital Birth Registration
Hospital birth registration serves two important objectives: it seeks to reduce under-registration in the moment it occurs and it serves as an important focal point for expecting parents as well as health workers and other community leaders. In conjunction with civil registry authorities and public hospitals, the projects ensure adequate facilities, provide informational technology, and support training and public awareness campaigns. At the request of the national counterparts, PUICA has implemented birth registration in El Salvador, Guatemala Haiti, Honduras and Panama.
Mobile Campaigns in border areas
The causes of under registration can often be attributed to the lack of access to civil registry offices. Mobile groups travel to these remote areas to issue documentation or correct erroneous information in situ. The project also facilitates alliances with public, nongovernmental and religious organizations, conducts public awareness campaigns, provides training and offers appropriate technological infrastructure, putting in place a permanent mechanism to guarantee civil identity for these communities. During the last two years, PUICA has focused its efforts on border areas, whose populations are disproportionately more likely to lack civil identity documentation.Reconstruction of destroyed records
At the request of the Government of Peru, PUICA provided assistance in the reconstruction of citizen identity documents that were destroyed in the internal conflict during the 1980s and 1990s. The effort combined elements of public awareness, archival research and the implementation of technology to repair and preserve damaged documents.
Institutional Interoperability and database security
Until recently, most civil registries procedures were paper based. Information was entered into large registration books, often stored in the municipalities whose responsibility it was to record birth, deaths and marriages. Most countries of the Americas have embarked on a process of automatizing registries in centralized databases, using scanned versions of the original registries to verify the veracity and accuracy of the information. Eventually, civil registries will expand interconnectivity to provide for registration in the outlying regions and provide updated vital statistics to other governmental entities.
Horizontal cooperation and identification of successful practices
One of the primary purposes of PUICA is to foster regional and horizontal cooperation in the many facets of civil identity. The principle mechanism for this exchange of information is the Latin American and Caribbean Council of Civil Registries, Identity and Vital Statistics (link to website: www.clarciev.com). PUICA has also developed strategic alliances with the United Nations Children’s Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, Plan International and has conducted analysis and workshops with national civil registry authorities in the Americas. It has also worked closely on the issue of document security with the International Civil Aeronautics Organization and the Inter-American Commission against Terrorism.