By Cicero & Assisted by ChatGPT
Once regarded as a relative haven of stability in South America, Ecuador has slid rapidly into one of the continent’s most violent nations — driven by drug-trafficking, gang warfare and the erosion of state control.
The Shift
In 2018, Ecuador’s intentional homicide rate hovered at around 6 per 100,000 inhabitants — a low figure in the region.
Fast-forward to 2023 and the rate had climbed to nearly 47 per 100,000 — placing Ecuador among the worst globally.
The following year, in 2024, the rate remained alarmingly high at roughly 38.8 per 100,000, still among the highest rates recorded in the country’s history.
One stark data point: in Ecuador’s capital of gang violence, Durán (near Guayaquil), the homicide rate reportedly reached 145 per 100,000 in 2023 — making it one of the most violent cities in the world.
What’s Fueling It
Several converging forces:
Drug-trafficking corridors. Ecuador’s coastal ports and geography make it a transit hub for cocaine headed from Colombia and Peru toward the U.S., Europe and Central America. This has drawn powerful transnational criminal organisations and sparked violent turf wars.
Fragmentation of prison gangs and extension of their violence beyond prison walls into public life. The state’s monopoly of force has been challenged.
Weakening state capacity. Analysts note that Ecuador’s ability to effectively govern security, prosecute crime and maintain control has declined markedly.
Territorial battles among gangs. Many of the coastal provinces (Guayas, El Oro, Manabí, Los Ríos) are now declared under states of emergency due to gang violence, making large swathes of the country extremely dangerous.
The Human and Institutional Cost
The toll is huge: thousands of lives lost, communities destabilised, internal forced displacement on the rise. In 2024 alone over 100,000 internal displacements were recorded because of violence.
The prison system is especially battered: mass riots, killings of inmates and corruption have become routine.
Politically, the crisis is bleeding into governance. Ahead of a recent election, the pandemic of violence was cited as a key factor in the voter mood, public trust in institutions and the ability of the state to manage multiple crises.
Government Response – And Why It’s Struggling
In January 2024 the government declared the existence of an “internal armed conflict” and deployed military forces alongside police to try to regain control.
But despite these efforts, the numbers tell a grim story — violence remains at historically high levels, and in some months 2025 has seen homicide increments again.
Challenges remain: entrenched gangs, corruption, the lure of illicit economies, and the sheer geographic and institutional scale of the problem.
Why This Matters
Ecuador’s descent reminds us that peace and stability are fragile — even in places once considered safe. For journalists, policy-makers and citizens alike, it’s a case study in how crime, drugs, weak governance and geography can combine into a high-stakes crisis.
For the region and for global observers, the stakes are clear: what happens in Ecuador affects trafficking routes, migration flows, refugee and displacement patterns, and wider security dynamics.
The Take-away
Ecuador has gone from one of the more peaceful nations in South America to one of its most violent in a matter of years. The rate of killings, displacement and institutional breakdown are alarming. While the government has recognised the crisis and mobilised responses, the road to turning this around remains steep and uncertain.
For all of us who care about justice, reform, and the environment—with which social stability is entwined—this is a wake-up call: the battle against organised crime isn’t just about corridors of drugs and guns; it’s about the health of democracy, the rights of citizens and the shape of societies.
Guayaquil and Durán: Ecuador’s Cities of Fear
For decades, Guayaquil was known as Ecuador’s beating economic heart — a city of merchants, shipping routes, and working-class pride. Now, it’s become the front line of a violent crisis that has reshaped the nation’s very identity.
The country’s largest port city, once the pride of Ecuador’s Pacific coast, has seen its streets transformed into battlegrounds. The nearby city of Durán, just across the Guayas River, has become the symbol of this unravelling — its murder rate peaking at an astonishing 145 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world.
How It Happened
Guayaquil’s rise as a crime hub wasn’t sudden. The seeds were sown when Colombian and Mexican cartels began using Ecuadorian ports to move cocaine northwards. As global crackdowns intensified elsewhere, traffickers found Ecuador’s combination of geography, weak institutions, and deep poverty fertile ground.
Soon, local gangs splintered into violent factions, each aligned with rival international cartels. The notorious Los Choneros and Los Lobos gangs began a turf war that spilled far beyond the prisons — assassinations, extortion, and public executions became part of everyday life.
“The cartels no longer need to cross borders,” said one Guayaquil journalist under anonymity. “They’re already here, and they’ve built empires from our despair.”
Communities Under Siege
Residents now live with nightly curfews — not official ones, but those imposed by fear. Businesses shut early. Families huddle indoors as gunfire echoes from the barrios. Schools have shortened hours; teachers in some districts wear bulletproof vests.
In Durán, morgues overflow. “We bury more young men than we graduate,” a local priest told El Universo. “Every funeral feels like a warning that goes unheard.”
State of Emergency, State of Paralysis
In early 2024, the government declared an “internal armed conflict”, deploying troops to reclaim parts of Guayaquil and its surrounding towns. Yet for many, the state’s presence arrived too late — and often, only temporarily.
President Daniel Noboa’s administration has vowed to restore control, building new maximum-security prisons and tightening border patrols. But human rights groups warn that militarisation risks becoming a blunt instrument, failing to address corruption and inequality — the real roots of the crisis.
The Human Cost
The figures are staggering: over 5,000 murders in 2024 alone; more than 100,000 people displaced within the country due to gang violence and fear. Journalists are targeted. Judges and prosecutors have fled abroad. Even small shopkeepers face daily “protection” fees from criminal groups.
The exodus has spilled over borders — thousands of Ecuadorians have joined migration caravans heading north, escaping violence more than poverty.
A Country at a Crossroads
Ecuador’s transformation is as swift as it is tragic. Once praised for its peace and hospitality, it now ranks among the world’s most violent. Yet amid the despair, there remains resilience. Civic groups, journalists, and church leaders still speak out.
In the quiet defiance of Guayaquil’s residents — in their morning markets, in their rebuilding after each tragedy — lies a stubborn belief that the country can be reclaimed.
“Ecuador is not lost,” said sociologist María Fernanda Espinosa. “But it must look its demons in the eye before it can heal.”
Since taking office, President Daniel Noboa has made his signature issue the crackdown on organised gangs and narcotics-trafficking in Ecuador.
Early in 2024, facing a surge in brazen violence (prison riots, car-bombs, even a TV-studio hostage situation), he declared an “internal armed conflict” and launched his “Plan Fénix” — deploying the military alongside police in a heavily militarised security push.
His government passed sweeping legal reforms in 2025 augmenting executive and security-force powers: harsher sentences, quicker asset seizures, and relaxed oversight mechanisms.
On the one hand, many Ecuadorians welcomed the strong action amid rampant fear; on the other, human-rights groups warn that the militarised approach has eroded civil liberties, blurred lines between law-enforcement and warfare, and generated serious risks of abuses, including arbitrary detentions and forced disappearances.
On the international front, Noboa has cultivated a distinctly pro-United States, pro-Donald J. Trump posture. Trump, for his part, publicly congratulated Noboa on his re-election and the two met privately in Florida in March 2025, where issues of narco-trafficking, security cooperation and a possible U.S. support role in Ecuador were discussed.
Noboa has explicitly sought Washington’s backing to label Ecuadorian gangs as terrorists, and has emulated Trump-style rhetoric (trade tariffs, strong immigration/security stance) to solidify his image as the “iron-fist” presiding in a dangerous region.
The upshot: their relationship underscores a geopolitical turn in Ecuador, one in which Noboa has linked the domestic war on crime with a wider alignment toward Trump’s brand of law-and-order diplomac
Has tackling crime impacted on civil liberties and human rights, three well-documented incidents under Daniel Noboa’s security-crackdown era with both public-safety and human-rights concern :
1. Enforced disappearances by the military (2024–25)
A report by Amnesty International revealed that during operations by the military under Ecuador’s so-called “Plan Fénix” framework, in the provinces of Esmeraldas, Los Ríos and Guayas, at least ten people were subject to enforced disappearance in 2024 alone. In total, by the time of the report over 40 + disappearances had been registered. The rights-group noted that the heavy militarisation of policing had facilitated these abuses, while shrinking oversight and due-process safeguards. This puts a sharp spotlight on what was framed as a war-on-crime but with substantial collateral cost to civil-liberties.
2. Repression of protests & freedom of assembly (September 2025)
In mid-September 2025, large protests led by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) erupted after Noboa’s government removed diesel-fuel subsidies. The government responded with deployment of the military, declaration of states of emergency, curfews and blanket security operations. The rights-group Human Rights Watch documented how security-forces used excessive force, froze bank accounts of protest leaders and sued them for “terrorism”. This shows how the crime-crackdown logic expanded into political and civil rights space—raising serious questions about where security ends and repression begins.
3. “Internal armed conflict” declaration and emerging extrajudicial risks (2024)
Early in his term, Noboa declared Ecuador to be in an “internal armed conflict”, a move that legalised a heightened military role in public-security operations. Rights groups warned that this framing blurred the line between law-enforcement and war, enabling measures that circumvented standard civil-justice protections—arbitrary arrests, ill-treatment, extrajudicial killings. The result? A security posture whose gains in crime-control may be counterbalanced by erosion of human-rights safeguards.