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” that he has declared against organized crime gangs.
The highest court of guarantees of Ecuador declared unconstitutional with a vote of the majority of its members, decree 275 that declared the state of emergency in seven of the twenty-four provinces of the country, as well as in a municipality of an eighth province, under the justification of the existence of an “internal armed conflict”.
This last state of exception sought to replace another previous one that covered five provinces and that the Constitutional Court had also knocked down.
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 Camilo Ponce Enríquez municipality, 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 internal armed conflict,” according to the ruling made public on Friday.
The magistrates highlighted that, for the most recent decree, the argument of the internal armed conflict “It was the only (reason) invoked by the President of the Republic.”
“It is worth remembering that, due to its important legal implications, both the reiterated jurisprudence of this Court and international law have established that in order for the cause of internal armed conflict to be established, two parameters must be considered that take into account the seriousness of the situation of violence,” the Court noted.
Among those two parameters cited by the court is “the level of organization of the armed group and the intensity of hostilities.”
“However, in the decree and in the reports that support itno indications related to said parameters are mentioned,” he concluded.
However, the Court clarified that “the confirmation that the declaration of a state of emergency does not meet the requirements set forth in the Constitution “It does not imply a lack of knowledge 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 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 support the Police. in operations against organized crime without the need to issue states of exception.
The last two resolutions of the Constitutional Court contrast with its ruling 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 evaluate the existence or not of an “internal armed conflict” as it was a factual event.
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.
To the bands of organized crimededicated mainly to drug trafficking, are attributed to the wave of violence that plagues Ecuador and that has led it to be among the first countries in Latin America with the most homicides, with a rate of about 47 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, according to the Observatory Ecuadorian Organized Crime Commission (OECS).