Statement from the Human Rights Alliance of Ecuador, August 6, 2025
In recent days, we have received alarming reports of escalating persecution and targeting of human rights defenders and social organizations. These developments are unfolding in the broader context of a dismantling of the rule of law, accelerated by the passage of four laws recently proposed by President Daniel Noboa and approved by the National Assembly: the Organic Law of National Solidarity, the Organic Law of Intelligence, the Organic Law of Public Integrity, and the Law for the Recovery of Protected Areas.
The current bill, the Organic Law for the Control of Irregular Capital Flows, is labeled as urgent in economic matters by President Noboa and known as the “foundations law”. President Noboa stated that it aims to combat foundations seeking to destabilize the country, particularly those allegedly promoting illegal mining:
“[I]n Ecuador, foundations, non-profit organizations, and international NGOs are used to bring money in and destabilize the country without any control from the UAFE (Financial Analysis and Prevention Unit) or any financial oversight (…) it has become a mechanism that promotes criminality that encourages illegal mining (…) to combat insecurity…and illegal mining… foundations are used to finance money laundering and to fund narco-terrorist organizations, which we cannot allow.”
Regarding this bill, the former minister La Gasca claimed that the foundations promoting illegal mining are those supporting the anti-mining front:
“[The ‘foundations law’ is] a project that seeks to regulate the irregular flow of money that goes through foundations, (…) in foundations, there isn’t the control that must exist, and there you have some foundations (…) fake foundations that serve to bring in foreign currencies to finance the anti-mining front, to fund irregular economy groups (…) unlike the other foundations looking for animals (…) which relate to culture, art, humanitarian efforts.”
According to Inés Manzano, the minister of the Ministry of Environment, Water, and Ecological Transition, which has been merged with the Ministry of Energy and Mines, even reputable public companies are “lying” if they issue technical reports questioning mining projects. This recently occurred with the municipal company ETAPA, which she threatened to remove as an administrator of El Cajas National Park for technically challenging the Loma Larga project operated by the Canadian company Dundee Minerals. The minister’s statements regarding “prior consultation” in Loma Larga reaffirm the complaints of rights defenders: that all mining in Ecuador is illegal because there has never been a prior consultation as mandated by the Constitution for nearly thirty years.
In this context, the Organic Law for the Control of Irregular Capital Flows seeks, among other aims, to control civil society organizations that defend territorial and environmental rights and that question the opaque and violent ways that mining and oil extractivism are imposed in the country. This project increases existing levels of control over civil society organizations, including community organizations, and imposes an exhaustive review of their objectives, the impact of their results, and their beneficiaries. It includes sanctions such as dissolution, suspension, and loss of legal status if they “carry out any activities that threaten fundamental rights, public order, or state security.” The project includes the possibility of freezing the funds of organizations without judicial authorization through the UAFE, as well as the participation of undercover agents to issue reports. Subsequent judicial control does not guarantee rights due to provisions that compromise judicial independence contained in other legal frameworks.
If this project is approved, it will worsen the stigmatization, criminalization, and silencing of fundamental actors and collectives guaranteeing the exercise of a democratic society. So far, neither the president nor the newly appointed government minister has presented factual evidence supporting the alleged relationship between civil society organizations and illicit economies (organized crime), despite this being the basis for such a significant law, in a universe of over 70,000 organizations.
On the contrary, there is evidence of organized crime infiltrating state institutions, including UAFE, high officials, military and police forces, anti-narcotics officials, mining control officials, the justice administration, as well as the uncontrolled proliferation of ghost companies for money laundering, extortion businesses in prisons, and public contracts with GDOS, among others.
The foundations law has no similar regulations regarding this issue, and despite the overwhelming evidence of state officials’ co-optation by organized crime, the legal framework issued to address the problem (national solidarity law, intelligence law, public integrity law, and protected areas law) neither confronts nor attacks that network of corruption. Instead, it undermines the principle of separation of powers, democratic debate, and citizen control and oversight.
The unconstitutional and unconventional militarization depends solely on the executive’s will. Surveillance and espionage of any individual depends on the will of officials from an intelligence system that answers to no one. The stability of public officials and justice officials relies on the will of their superiors—and the Judiciary Council in case of a declared state of emergency. Indigenous Peoples, as ancestral possessors of territories in protected areas, are reduced to service providers—at best, co-participants in decisions already made in their territory—or park rangers.
Despite this entire package of legal amendments, repeated states of emergency, and the dissemination of public funds for security issues, Ecuador faces the worst security figures in its history: The country closed the first half of 2025 with 4,557 murders. This figure reflects a 22% increase compared to the first half of 2023, which was the most violent year on record and the highest since 2011.
The militarization of Ecuadorian civil society in the last year and a half has resulted in increased reports of crimes related to human rights violations compared to the previous four years. According to information provided by the prosecutor’s office, regarding extrajudicial executions, 19 reports of the crime were filed, whereas between 2020 and 2023, only 8 cases were documented. In cases of torture, 272 reports were filed in the same period, exceeding the total number of 242 cases from the four previous years combined. Concerning the crime of exceeding authority in the line of duty, 393 reports were filed in a year and a half, while 440 cases were recorded between 2020 and 2023. In this year and a half, 27 cases of abuse of power resulted in death. Regarding forced disappearances, the prosecutor’s office reports 21 case notifications, which is likely an underreporting since civil society has recorded at least 33 cases.
If the ‘foundations law’ is approved, collectives, nature, and victims of severe human rights violations will be increasingly vulnerable. The law itself will serve, along with the other four recent laws promulgated by the Noboa government, as clear evidence of the arbitrary disregard for the Constitution with which the executive and legislative operate. Furthermore, its approval will continue the persecution, criminalization, and threats against defenders, who are already at high risk and lack any protection system to safeguard their work in Ecuador.
On August 4, the Ministry of Environment, Water, and Ecological Transition—merged through the contested Executive Order 60 with the Ministry of Energy and Mines—informally and in evident disarray, requested information from over 440 organizations and individuals, many of whom are human rights defenders, collectives, and environmentalists. It gave them 48 hours to provide extensive information based on the contested Order 193, issued during the Lenín Moreno government.
The requested information pertains to annual activity reports, economic reports, and the respective declarations presented to the Internal Revenue Service (SRI), along with details on the sources of funding used by the organization for 2022, 2023, and 2024. We warn that this request constitutes a form of harassment. We also issue a reminder that in its last examination of Ecuador, the Human Rights Committee questioned President Noboa’s “integrity” strategy regarding civil society organizations:
- The Committee is concerned about reports on the use of the Integrity Strategy for Civil Society Organizations/Non-Governmental Organizations to limit the functioning of NGOs. In particular, the Committee expresses concern over the requirements contained within this strategy for civil society organizations to maintain their legal personality, which could constitute an obstacle to the free exercise of their activities and represent an undue restriction on the right to freedom of association (art. 22).
- In accordance with Article 22 of the Pact, the State party must adopt necessary measures to ensure, in law and practice, the effective exercise of the right to freedom of association and that members of civil society organizations can exercise their freedom of association without being subjected to restrictions incompatible with the Pact. In particular, it must refrain from adopting any measure or law that may limit the exercise of the right to freedom of association or lead to undue control of civil society organizations or interference in their activities.
In this context of stigmatization, unconventional and unconstitutional legislation, lack of data for public policy, populist, erratic measures with no factual basis for combating crime, violations of human, collective, and environmental rights, criminalization of defenders, and harassment, the Constitutional Court is called to fulfill its role as guardian of the Constitution and constitutional rights. Several organizations and individuals have made this demand through legal resources intended to suspend the unconstitutional and unconventional laws promulgated in abuse of the emergency procedures established in the Constitution and in violation of constitutional provisions.
On August 4th, the Constitutional Court admitted challenges and temporarily suspended various norms in recently promulgated laws. Actions concerning the declaration of unconstitutionality against the public integrity law and protected areas law remain pending resolution.
Following this, we are concerned by the start of a media campaign attacking and discrediting the Constitutional Court and the increase of narratives calling for the polarization and division of civil society. We are also concerned by the inclusion of a question by the executive in the proposed popular consultation to be carried out in December 2025, proposing that judges be subject to political trial, returning to the times of the so-called “Pichi Corte” and to the dismantling of the Constitutional Tribunal of that time. We warn that these unconstitutional and unconventional actions led to significant sentences and compensations for Ecuador in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which the entire country has been forced to pay.
We warn that the President of the Republic, the first who is obligated to respect the rulings of the Constitutional Court, has called for a march in rejection of the Court’s actions, scheduled for August 12th, thereby seriously threatening the independence of the Constitutional Court. He stated, “We cannot allow nine people entrenched, who do not even appear in photos, to come and bring down the laws that can provide security to each one of you.”
In the call by the President against the Constitutional Court, remarks from the Government Minister, Zaida Rovira, and the President of the Assembly, Niels Olsen, were published. Upon learning of the suspension of legal norms, they appeared surrounded by military personnel:
“The Constitutional Court owes an explanation to the country; an explanation with face, with foundations (Rovira). We approved three laws that the country urgently needed (…). Citizens watching us deserve to know: who is responsible for this suspension? Who takes charge of having rendered ineffective legal tools that were already laws of the Republic?” (Olsen)
Subsequently, Minister Rovira described the Constitutional Court as an “enemy organism of the citizens” in an interview. These statements from the high-ranking official again threaten the independence of the Constitutional Court and have already drawn concern from the United Nations Rapporteur on Judicial Independence.
For all the aforementioned reasons, the organizations that have signed below:
a. Reject the harassment from the President of the Republic and high-ranking state officials against the Constitutional Court, threatening its independence and the role it plays in a democratic society and under the rule of law.
b. Demand that the National Assembly refrain from approving normative texts that violate constitutional rights and conventional provisions and comply with constitutional procedures, refraining from attempting to modify them at the whim of mobile majorities.
c. Demand that the Executive refrain from promoting populist initiatives that put constitutional rights and their defenders at high risk.
d. Demand that public security policy be constructed based on data and information collected, not on suspicions about civil society organizations used as a smokescreen to avoid controlling ghost companies and the accumulation of capital from illicit economies.
e. Demand respect for the independence and impartiality of the Constitutional Court and the administration of justice and strict adherence and compliance with their rulings.
f. Demand that the Executive refrain from stigmatizing and putting at risk the work of defenders, including refraining from spying on individuals and organizations defending rights, collectives, and nature. We warn that the regulations allowing such unconstitutional surveillance have been suspended.
g. Demand that the Executive refrain from harassing defenders of human rights, collective rights, and environmental rights by any means. The government’s duty is to ensure a safe environment to carry out our work.
h. Warn the international community, international human rights organizations, collectives, and the protective bodies of environmental rights, regional and universal rights, about the dismantling of the rule of law in Ecuador. And warn these bodies of the threats posed by a popular consultation and the actions from the Executive, which seek to infringe upon the Constitutional Court’s independence and impartiality.
Additional organizations include:
- Ecuadorian Coordinator of Organizations for the Defense of Nature and the Environment (CEDENMA).
- Coalition of Diverse and Feminist Women of Chimborazo.
- Ecuadorian Foundation for Equity.
- Free Esmeraldas.
- Pact for Childhood and Adolescence.
- School Rescue Group.
- Coalition Against School Abuse towards Childhood (COCASEN).
- The Feminist RUDA.
- People and Life Foundation.
- Collective Entretejidas.
Truth, Justice, and Reparation!
