The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboaagain decreed this Thursday for 60 days a new state of exception in Ecuador to combat organized crime, which covers nine of the country’s 24 provinces, as well as four municipalities located in three other provinces.
Among the jurisdictions affected by the new state of emergency are the capital Quito and Guayaquilthe two main cities of the country, which together have about 7 million inhabitants, out of a total of about 18 million that the Andean country has.
During the validity of this state of emergency, the fundamental rights of inviolability of the home and correspondence will be suspended, so that the Police and the Armed forces They may enter homes without prior judicial authorization, as well as intercept communications.
Likewise, the Armed Forces will be deployed to carry out operations against criminal organizations in prior coordination with the Police.
The decree was issued the day before the beginning of the three holidays for Easter week in Ecuadorwhen millions of Ecuadorians are going on trips to visit other areas of the country.
The provinces under this measure are located mainly on the coast of the country, where the activities of criminal organizations are concentrated, mainly dedicated to drug trafficking with the aim of sending large quantities of cocaine produced mainly in Colombia to Europe and the United States.
This is the case of Emeralds and The Goldbordering Colombia and Peru, respectively, as well as Guayas, Manabi, Saint Helena, The Rivers and Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas.
To them is added Pichinchawhere Quito is located, and the Amazon province of succumbalso bordering Colombia, where the Ecuadorian Armed Forces recently carried out military operations with the collaboration of USA to supposedly destroy camps of the Border Commandos, a dissident group of the extinct guerrilla of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
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Since 2024, when Noboa declared the “war” to organized crime, the Ecuadorian president has decreed successive states of exception whose scope has varied depending on the moment, in some cases covering the entire national territory.
The penultimate one even contemplated a night curfew for 15 days in four provinces, including Guayas, whose capital is Guayaquil.
The purpose is to alleviate the worst crisis of criminal violence in the country, but until now the violence rates have continued to increase until they are at the top of Latin America in homicides, with more than 50 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2025.
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