For traveling in Mercosur countries, as well as Chile and Bolivia, Uruguayan citizens may use their ID card.[1].

This challenge appears to arise from a literal interpretation from the ICAO 9303 part 3 manual, which in its Spanish translation, uses the word nationality rather than the original English version which refers to citizenship in the case of the country code that applies in the machine readable zone.

Uruguay's national identity authority uses country of birth in lieu of nationality for naturalised citizens, leading to error responses on migratory and airline legal identity checks.

In this context, currently France and Switzerland don't recognise as valid Uruguayan passports issued for legal citizens (see Switzerland visa requirements), requiring them to obtain a passport of their country of origin to be able to travel to these countries.

The irregularities around Uruguayan passports issued to legal citizen are causing a limitation to the human rights of identity and mobility which reached the attention of the Interamerican Commission for Human Rights.