Court endorses extension of the state of emergency decreed by Noboa

Yesterday, the Constitutional Court of Ecuador endorsed the 30-day extension ordered by the Government of President Daniel Noboa to the state of exception that it decreed on January 8 to put an end to a spiral of violence on a national scale linked to organized crime gangs. , and which in principle was to conclude 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 the Armed Forces 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 their 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”.