Carter Center Report Identifies Equal-Access Gaps for Prisoners, Persons with Disabilities, Amerindian Communities, and LGBTI Citizens in 2025 Elections
By Marvin Cato | HGP Nightly News|
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA — While Guyana’s 2025 General and Regional Elections were generally well administered, four specific groups of eligible citizens faced significant barriers to exercising their right to vote, according to the Carter Center’s recently released observation report.
The Carter Center identified concerns affecting prisoners, persons with disabilities, members of Amerindian communities, and members of the LGBTI community. The report described these access gaps as “unfinished work” in Guyana’s democratic development, even as it acknowledged that the technical conduct of the 2025 elections marked a significant improvement over the contested 2020 process.
The Carter Center said election day procedures themselves were generally well administered, with no significant irregularities observed at the polling stations its observers visited. The equal-access findings, the report indicated, related to systemic gaps in how Guyana’s electoral framework reaches and includes specific categories of eligible citizens — not to the conduct of voting on the day itself.
The clearest gap, according to the Carter Center, involved prisoners. The report noted that prisoners on remand, and prisoners serving sentences for certain types of convictions, are entitled to vote under Guyana’s legal framework. In practice, however, all prisoners were deprived of that right because no procedures exist to enable them to cast ballots.
The Carter Center described this as an effective exclusion of a category of citizens whose voting rights exist on paper but cannot be exercised in practice.
The report found that most polling stations in Guyana remained physically inaccessible to persons with disabilities and lacked practical accommodations such as ramps or tactile aids for voters with visual impairments.
The Carter Center acknowledged positive steps had been taken — including sensitivity training for polling staff, voter-education efforts, and engagement with disability organisations — but said these measures did not fully address the underlying absence of basic accessibility arrangements at polling stations.
The Center stated that inclusive elections require polling stations to be physically accessible and voting arrangements to protect both the secrecy and the independence of the vote for persons with disabilities.
The Carter Center noted that Amerindians make up approximately 10% of Guyana’s population and live in roughly 200 villages and communities across the country.
The report acknowledged that legal changes implemented before the 2025 elections made it easier for toshaos — the elected leaders of Amerindian villages — to assist community members in obtaining birth certificates and registration documents.
However, the Carter Center said it was informed that some adult indigenous citizens remained unregistered because they did not possess birth certificates, which prevented their inclusion on the voters list. The report also noted that voter education remained limited in some villages, partly due to weak radio broadcast capacity in remote areas.
The Carter Center also addressed barriers faced by members of the LGBTI community, and specifically criticised Guyana’s anti-gay laws — colonial-era statutes that criminalise certain same-sex conduct.
The Center said homophobic speech in the political environment affects the ability of LGBTI citizens to participate meaningfully in politics, and identified the legal framework itself as a barrier to inclusion.
The Carter Center’s equal-access findings are part of a broader observation report that also documented significant improvements in the tabulation of results following the contested 2020 elections, raised concerns about state media coverage favouring the ruling party, and noted weak civil society participation in the 2025 democratic process. https://youtu.be/XLYASu8zQAo
The Carter Center has urged that the Constitutional Reform Commission’s work include consideration of these equal-access gaps, and that all parliamentary parties participate in reform discussions in an inclusive, transparent, and timely manner.
The Government has not, at the time of publication, issued a formal response to the Carter Center’s equal-access findings.
