Partial equivalence relations (and categories of these) are a standard tool in semantics of type theories and programming languages, since they often provide a cartesian closed category with extended definability. Using the theory of exact categories, we give a category-theoretic explanation of why the construction of a category of partial equivalence relations often produces a cartesian closed category. We show how several familiar examples of categories of partial equivalence relations fit into the general framework. 1 Introduction Partial equivalence relations (and categories of these) are a standard tool in semantics of programming languages, see e.g. [2, 5, 7, 9, 15, 17, 20, 22, 35] and [6, 29] for extensive surveys. They are usefully applied to give proofs of correctness and adequacy since they often provide a cartesian closed category with additional properties. Take for instance a partial equivalence relation on the set of natural numbers: a binary relation R ` N\ThetaN on th...