Port-au-Prince, Haiti – November 8, 2026: A landmark civic education gathering focused on Haiti’s first-time eligible voters unfolded on November 6, 2026 at Port-au-Prince’s Karibe Hotel, co-hosted by the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) in close partnership with the country’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP). Centered on the guiding theme “First-time voters: understanding the electoral process and its stakeholders”, the day-long initiative was designed to demystify Haiti’s electoral systems for young newly enfranchised citizens, with targeted outreach to dismantle barriers that have long sidelined young women from formal democratic participation.
Delivering the keynote address, CEP President Peterson Pierre-Louis framed the 18th birthday as a transformative civic threshold, marking the moment Haitian citizens gain the legal right to cast a ballot that shapes national governance. He issued a direct call to attendees to reject coercive pressure and exploitative transactional political practices, urging them to cast fully informed, independent votes that reflect their own priorities rather than external demands. Pierre-Louis walked the audience through critical actionable steps for new voters, stressing the non-negotiable importance of completing official electoral roll registration, tracking key upcoming dates on the 2026-2027 electoral calendar, and exploring all formal pathways to engage with electoral governance beyond just casting a ballot on polling day.
Wilfince Mombrun, Director General of Haiti’s Ministry of Youth, contextualized the event against a backdrop of cascading hurdles facing the nation’s youth population. Beyond widely documented widespread public security crises, Mombrun emphasized that the single largest unaddressed barrier to youth electoral participation is pervasive lack of accessible, clear information about how Haiti’s electoral system operates, a gap the new awareness campaign is explicitly designed to close.
Representing Haiti’s Ministry on the Status of Women, Éveline Bien-Aimé François highlighted the persistent systemic underrepresentation of young women in Haitian political and public life, noting that targeted, sustained outreach campaigns are required to close the gender gap in electoral roll registration and ensure young women’s voices are centered in upcoming electoral cycles.
The event’s afternoon sessions included a youth-led open forum, facilitated entirely by a cohort of trained, experienced young Haitian women, where attendees openly debated structural and cultural barriers that keep young people, particularly young women, from participating in civic and political life. In a hands-on practical demonstration, CEP Electoral Registry Director Jean Marie Rémy led a full simulation of both the voter registration process and formal polling day voting workflows, unveiling the newly launched mobile voter registration system that is currently being rolled out across the country to reduce geographic barriers for eligible voters who cannot access fixed electoral offices.