The Constitutional Court of Ecuador endorsed this Tuesday the 30-day extension ordered by the President’s Government Daniel Noboa to the state of exception that was decreed on January 8 to put an end to a spiral of nationwide violence linked to organized crime gangs, and that in principle was to end at the beginning of March.
The highest court of guarantees declared the “constitutionality of the renewal of the state of emergency decreed throughout the national territory”, including inside prisons, “for 30 days counting from March 9, 2024.”
With this, the state of emergency will govern until the beginning of next April with restriction measures such as the suspension of free mobility, assembly and association, as well as the participation of Forces Armed in support of the Police for internal control operations in the country.
Furthermore, the Court recognized the existence of a “non-international armed conflict” carried out against criminal gangs, which have been held responsible for the outbreak of violence in prisons and streets.
According to the Court, the internal armed conflict is “a matter of fact and, therefore, does not depend on political” or legal recognition by any public authority.
The Constitutional Court recalled that “the intervention of the Armed Forces to guarantee sovereignty and territorial integrity is one of its ordinary powers,” but stressed that, in the event of an armed conflict, they “can mobilize and intervene, in accordance with the legal system, without the need for a declaration of a state of emergency.
A presidential report
In its ruling, the Constitutional Court ordered that President Noboa send it a report with the results of the application of the measure “once the period of validity of the state of emergency has ended.”
He recalled that “the final objective of the state of exception is to guarantee public order, social peace and the peaceful coexistence of citizens”, which is why he stressed that the actions carried out within this framework by the Police and the Armed Forces “must respect the applicable legal system, including the human rights of the entire population.
The high court emphasized that all public servants “will be responsible for any abuse they have committed in the exercise of their powers during the validity of the state of emergency.”
It also ordered that the Ombudsman’s Office, within the framework of its powers, monitor the actions carried out in relation to the declaration of the state of emergency and report to the Constitutional Court once it ends.
The violence continues
On March 7, President Noboa issued an executive decree with which he extended for 30 days the nationwide state of emergency that had already been in force since January 8, which reduced the homicide numbers (according to official sources ), although there was an uptick in the last week with the murder of a mayor and the deaths of a police officer and a soldier in separate confrontations with criminals.
Since January 9, it also declared the existence of an “internal armed conflict”, which began to consider organized crime gangs as terrorist groups and non-state belligerent actors, and militarized the prisons, which it considered as “zones of security”.
During the first sixty days of the state of emergency, state security forces reported that they had killed a dozen alleged criminals classified as “terrorists”, while three police officers had died while carrying out the law.
As of March 8, law enforcement forces had arrested more than 11,000 people and seized more than 3,300 firearms and more than 24,000 explosives.
The Armed Forces took control of prisons, which had been dominated by criminal gangs, whose rivalries have left more than 500 prisoners murdered since 2020 in a series of prison massacres.
Prison violence also took to the streets last year to such an extent that Ecuador became one of the most violent countries in Latin America, with 45 intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023. EFE (I)
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