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Quito (AFP) – The presidents of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, headed a joint cabinet on Tuesday in which they agreed to create a council to fight against environmental crimes and combat organized crime.
“We have decided to set up a binational council against environmental crimes, which will meet every six months. We will fight together against this scourge,” Lasso declared in the company of his Colombian counterpart from the border city of Tulcán.
The Ecuadorian ruler also stressed that “security and the fight against crime are a coincidence between Ecuador and Colombia,” which share a porous border of about 600 km from the Pacific to the Amazon jungle. Drug traffickers, illegal armed groups and arms smugglers operate in that area. In addition, clandestine crossings of migrants abound.
At the beginning of the meeting, Lasso warned that “one of the main challenges of the bilateral relationship is security cooperation” to combat “phenomena such as organized crime, illicit drug trafficking and related crimes.”
Ecuador faces the violence of drug trafficking that disputes spaces of power in the streets and prisons of the country, while its neighbor Colombia is the largest producer of cocaine in the world.
Guerrillas, drug traffickers, paramilitaries and state agents face off in the midst of the long-running Colombian conflict that has left more than nine million victims.
And in Ecuador, while drug trafficking has grown (200 tons of drugs seized in 2022), violence has increased. The homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants doubled, from 14 in 2021 to 25 in 2022.
On the other hand, Petro stressed earlier that the region has “the greatest potential for clean energy in the world”, for which he called on his counterpart to develop agreements that protect the jungle and the ocean.
“Colombia and Ecuador can be a fundamental axis of the Planet, of geopolitics, but ultimately of life and human existence,” said the Colombian president, who also spoke of the need for “energy integration.”
The presidents also addressed issues such as the expansion of the road that connects Ecuador with the Colombian cities of Cali and Popayán, in the south of the country.
