The Constitutional Court of Ecuador annulled the last state of emergency decreed by the president Daniel Noboawho called it the “second phase of the war” he declared against organized crime gangs.
Ecuador’s highest court of guarantees declared unconstitutional with the vote of the majority of its members decree 275 that declared a state of emergency in seven of the country’s twenty-four provinces, as well as in a municipality of an eighth province, under the justification of the existence of an “internal armed conflict”.
READ MORE | Ecuador: Vice President Abad is linked to a corruption case
This last state of exception sought to replace a previous one that covered five provinces and that Constitutional Court had also dropped.
The new declaration suspended the right to the inviolability of the home in the provinces of Guayas, Santa Elena, El Oro, Manabí, Sucumbíos, Orellana and Los Ríos, and in the municipality of Camilo Ponce Enríquez, in the province of Azuay.
In both cases, the court considered that “the facts mentioned in the decree do not specifically constitute the cause of the internal armed conflict”, according to the decision made public on Friday.
LOOK HERE | Daniel Noboa vetoes law that guaranteed the delivery of resources to municipalities in Ecuador
The judges highlighted that, for the most recent decree, the argument of the internal armed conflict “It was the only (reason) cited by the President of the Republic.”
“It is worth remembering that, due to its important legal implications, both the repeated jurisprudence of this Court and international law have established that in order to establish the cause of the internal armed conflict, two parameters must be considered that take into account the seriousness of the violent situation” , the Court observed.
Between these two parameters cited by the court is “the level of organization of the armed group and the intensity of hostilities”.
“No indications related to these parameters are mentioned”, he concluded.
LOOK HERE | An employee of the Ecuador Public Prosecutor’s Office is murdered in a province under a state of emergency
However, the Court clarified that “this does not imply ignorance of the serious acts of violence and the complex circumstances that the country is going through”.
He also recalled that his decision does not affect the powers provided for in the ordinary legal system for the Executive to use the Armed Forces to fulfill its constitutional mission, since Ecuadorians approved by a large majority in a referendum held in April that the military supports the Police. in operations against organized crime without the need to issue states of exception.
The Constitutional Court’s last two resolutions contrast with its decision on the first state of exception decreed by Noboa at the beginning of the year and which lasted ninety days, where the court indicated that it was not up to it to assess the existence or not of an “internal armed conflict” as it was a factual fact.
MORE INFORMATION | Noboa manages to register the official ADN movement to seek re-election in 2025
At that time he noted that “the existence or not of an internal armed conflict is a question of fact, which does not depend on the declaration of a public authority, such as the issuance of a state of emergency or its control by that body”. “
Since the beginning of the year, Noboa raised the fight against organized crime to the category of “internal armed conflict”, with which criminal gangs were classified as terrorist groups and non-state belligerent actors.
For the bands organized crimededicated mainly to drug trafficking, are attributed to the wave of violence that is plaguing Ecuador and that has led it to be among the first countries in Latin America with the most homicides, with a rate of around 47 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, according to the Observatory of the Ecuadorian Organized Crime Commission (OECO).
Source: Elcomercio
I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.
