The IOM Mission in Ecuador and the Canadian Commercial Corporation
this week signed an amendment to their existing cooperation
agreement on the Modernization of the Ecuadorian Passport Issuance
System.

The amendment guarantees financial support for the passport
emission services to continue until 2010; the update of the
Information Technology infrastructure; an expansion of the service
to include 16 new consulates and two new provinces in Ecuador; and
the establishment of a technical support call centre.

The IOM-managed project has provided the Government of Ecuador
with state-of-the-art equipment to issue reliable and secure
machine-readable travel documents (MRTD).  The project's main
objective is to provide MRTDs to Ecuadorians through a system that
guarantees compliance with security and quality standards
established by the International Civil Aviation Organization
(ICAO). 

"Before 2002, when IOM began this programme, passports were done
manually, did not comply with international security standards and
were easy to forge.  Furthermore, there was no database to
keep information. The lack of modern technology made the process
long drawn out, with people waiting for hours in long lines,"
explains Alejandro Guidi, IOM Chief of Mission in Ecuador.

The new system, which includes 23 security mechanisms
incorporated into the machine-readable document, has reduced the
issuance process to an average of 20 minutes, and created a
database that can be accessed by Ecuadorian consulates
worldwide.

The new phase of the project will also provide training for the
staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ensure the security of
the data collected.  Some 350,000 new passports are processed
every year in Ecuador.

Officials from Australia, Bolivia, Colombia, Kenya, Tanzania,
Trinidad and Tobago, and Uganda have visited Ecuador to look into
the passport issuance process.

For more information, please contact:

Ana Guzman

IOM Ecuador

Tel: + 593.2.225.3948

E-mail: "mailto:aguzman@iom.int">aguzman@iom.int

or

Cesar Perez 

Tel:  +593.2.290-8027

E-mail: "mailto:cperez@iom.int">cperez@iom.int