Government declares state of emergency in six provinces with the highest crime rate in Ecuador

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa on Tuesday decreed the validity of a Exception status for sixty days in six provinces and one town, with the aim of confronting the spiral of violence unleashed by criminal gangs.

The decree alleges a state of serious internal unrest and armed conflict in the provinces of Guayas, Los Ríos, Manabí, Orellana, Santa Elena, El Oro and in the mining town of Camilo Ponce Enríquez, in the province of Azuay, in the south of the country, where authorities have identified the highest rates of criminal violence.

In Camilo Ponce Enríquez, Mayor José Sánchez was shot dead in mid-April, while earlier this week the police reported the discovery of eight tortured and burned bodies in that canton, in what they initially identified as a settling of scores between criminal gangs.

The provision restricts the inviolability of the home and correspondence, as well as the right to free association and assembly.

This is the third time that Noboa has declared a targeted state of emergency, although on June 14, the last time he issued a similar decree, the Constitutional Court repealed it, citing mainly the lack of adequate argumentation for the existence of an internal armed conflict.

In this new state of emergency declared on Tuesday, Noboa explains the situation of internal unrest and the internal armed conflict in 44 pages, in which, among other arguments, he points out that organized armed groups have been identified “and the intensity of their illicit activities in Ecuadorian territory” which must be confronted through joint actions of the armed forces and the police.

A statement from the Presidency stated that with this decision, President Noboa will strengthen the strategies “to fight organized crime and terrorism, safeguarding the well-being and citizen security of the entire country, especially in these sectors.”

Ecuador has been mired in a climate of insecurity since the beginning of 2021, with a record increase in murders that placed the rate of violent deaths at the end of 2023 at 40 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest on the continent. Last year there were more than 7,600 crimes. Authorities attribute this to the action of criminal gangs related to drug trafficking.

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