Daniel Noboa declares a new state of emergency in Ecuador in the face of the persistent security crisis

Published at: 17/06/2026 11:11 AM

The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, ratified a new declaration of a state of emergency due to serious internal shock with a validity of two months. This emergency measure, which comes into force just 16 days after the end of the last period of constitutional restriction, shows the persistent instability that the country is going through.

Through this decree, the National Police and the Armed Forces are legally empowered to carry out joint operations aimed at containing and neutralizing criminal violence in multiple provinces.

Among the most drastic provisions of the decree is the temporary suspension of the right to the inviolability of the home, which empowers law enforcement agencies to carry out searches and inspections without requiring prior judicial authorization on suspicion of illegal activities.

This civil rights restriction will be applied in a focused manner in the provinces of Pichincha, Guayas, Manabí, Santa Elena, Los Ríos, El Oro, Esmeraldas, Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, Sucumbíos, Azuay and in selected localities of Cotopaxi, Bolívar and Cañar.

The situation responds to a profound crisis, where Ecuador has gone from being one of the safest countries in the region to registering homicide rates of more than 40 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

This spiral of violence is mainly driven by local criminal gangs linked to transnational drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia, who are waging a bloody war for control of cocaine export routes through strategic Pacific ports, especially in Guayaquil.

Since coming to power, Noboa has prioritized the use of military force and the state of emergency as central axes of his security strategy. While the authorities deploy their operations in tailor-made areas, the challenge for the Government is to demonstrate the sustainability of these actions in the face of criminal structures with high adaptive capacity, in a scenario where citizens expect tangible results that will allow them to recover peace and normalize daily life in the Andean country.

Mazo News Team