The European Union (EU) will organize this next week together with the Government of Ecuador the second International Consensus Conference on Penitentiary and Citizen Security, a space for dialogue between different social actors to agree on solutions to the crisis of violence and insecurity caused by crime. organized.
This second edition will take place from March 6 to 8 in Quito, within the framework of the “internal armed conflict” declared at the beginning of the year by the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, with which he began to consider criminal gangs, mainly dedicated to drug trafficking, such as terrorist groups.
Thus, the second International Consensus Conference on Penitentiary and Citizen Security in Ecuador will once again bring together national and international experts, representatives of state institutions, civil society, journalists and academics to address the country’s most pressing security challenges.
The European bloc holds the meeting through the European Union Emergency Response Program to Strengthen the Ecuadorian Penitentiary System (EURESP) and the Assistance Program against Transnational Organized Crime between Europe and Latin America (EL PAcCTO).
Other institutions will also be present, such as the Falcone-Borsellino Program, a cooperation initiative against organized crime in Latin America supported by the Government of Italy and the Italian-Latin American Institute (IILA).
Among the participants announced at this meeting are President Daniel Noboa, as well as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gabriela Sommerfeld, and the Attorney General Diana Salazar.
The director of the Foreign Policy Instrument Service of the European Commission, Peter Wagner, is also expected to participate; the Undersecretary of State of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy, Giorgio Silli, and the president of the Italian Anti-Mafia parliamentary commission, Chiara Colosimo.
Effective and applicable solutions
The objective of the meeting will be to promote a constructive dialogue and share real experiences from other countries to identify effective and applicable solutions that contribute to the construction of a safe and peaceful environment, the organizers of the Conference detailed in a statement.
The topics of discussion will focus on updating the legal framework, the relationship between the judiciary and the penitentiary administration, the classification and separation of prisoners according to their true level of danger.
The security management of intramural prisons and connections with extramural security (intelligence and crisis management) and international coordination strategies to fight transnational organized crime (CTO) will also be addressed; among other matters.
Likewise, the progress made since the first edition of this International Conference, held in May 2022, will be reviewed and new concrete actions that can be implemented through EL PAcCTO 2.0 and EURESP will be explored.
Prisons under military control
The declaration of the “internal armed conflict” came after a wave of attacks and violent actions by criminal gangs that included the takeover of a television channel by an armed group during a live broadcast and simultaneous riots in various prisons with some 200 hostages between guards and police who managed to be released after almost a week.
These episodes occurred at a time when the Noboa Government was preparing to implement its “iron fist” policy in prisons, many of them dominated by criminal gangs, whose rivalries unleashed a series of prison massacres since 2020 that left more of 450 prisoners murdered so far.
This violence has also moved to the streets to make Ecuador one of the most violent countries in Latin America, with 45 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, including prosecutors, judges and politicians such as presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
Since the beginning of the “internal armed conflict” the prisons have come to be intervened by the Police and the Armed Forces, with the aim of wresting internal control from the criminal groups, which had a large source of financing in them by charging quotas to the rest of the prisoners for food, water or spaces inside the cells. EFE
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