The secrecy surrounding a friendly settlement in a case that Ecuador brought against Colombia in the International Court of Justice for damage caused by anti-drug spraying along the border has further angered those affected by the fumigation.

Ecuador dropped the lawsuit filed in 2008 in The Hague-based Court, as a result of the agreement signed Sept. 9, a copy of which was obtained by IPS.

The settlement stipulates that Colombia is to pay 15 million dollars in compensation, to be invested in areas in Ecuador affected by the aerial spraying of coca crops with the glyphosate herbicide near the country’s border.

But how and when the investments will be made has not yet been clarified.

The Colombian government also pledged not to carry out aerial spraying over the next year within 10 km of the border with Ecuador, between the southwest Colombian provinces of Putumayo and Nariño and the northern Ecuadorean provinces of Sucumbíos, Carchi and Esmeraldas.“[I]f a single drop of glyphosate falls we will protest because we are prepared to carry this through to the end…” -- Daniel Alarcón, head of FORCCOFES

But that 10-km strip could be narrowed to five and eventually two km within two years, according to the conditions explained in appendix 1 of the settlement agreement.

The appendix states that after the first year, once the scientific analyses are studied, the binational technical group will assess whether Ecuadorean territory was affected by the spraying. If it was not, the exclusion zone will be reduced to five km wide for one year, and after that, to two km.

That is the main concern of peasant farmers who say their health, crops and livestock have been affected by glyphosate spraying.

Reducing the width of the exclusion zone to two km “is unfair, but the agreement has already been signed, and since it was between governments, we were left high and dry; but we will continue the struggle,” Daniel Alarcón, the head of the Federation of Peasant Organisations in the Ecuadorian Border Zone of Sucumbios (FORCCOFES), told IPS.

The settlement does not provide a real solution because “they will continue spraying near us,” he said.

“It will affect us – we hope only minimally – but if a single drop of glyphosate falls we will protest because we are prepared to carry this through to the end, to get reparations for the damage caused.”

Alarcón was referring to the health problems and deterioration in the quality of life that tens of thousands of people have suffered as a result of Colombia’s spraying near the Ecuadorean border between 2000 and 2007 with the aim of eradicating coca crops.

According to a survey conducted by Forccofes, some 15,000 families live in the border area in question, and the 10,000 families living along the San Miguel river have been affected the most by the spraying.

“The effects are still being felt; the land has not returned to normal production levels,” said Alarcón, who lives in 5 de Agosto, a community in the border district of General Farfán. “Cancer was almost unheard of here before, and now people are continuously dying of cancer because of the glyphosate, which has contaminated the water sources.”

The agreement between the two countries refers to the chemical composition of the herbicide that figures in the environmental management plan authorised by Colombia’s environment ministry in resolution 1054, from 2003.

According to the settlement, the mixture – which according to the government is used throughout the national territory – contains 44 percent glyphosate, one percent Cosmoflux, and 55 percent water.

But the label for the Monsanto corporation’s Roundup glyphosate herbicide recommends a concentration of 1.6 to 7.7 percent glyphosate, with an absolute upper limit of 29 percent.

There are no studies on the impact of Cosmoflux.

An econometric study carried out this year by two professors at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, on the health effects of aerial spraying, found that it had “a very significant” impact in terms of the likelihood of miscarriage. It also found a correlation between aerial spraying and skin problems.

Uruguayan political analyst Laura Gil, who disseminated the terms of the settlement in Colombia on Oct. 1, told IPS that it was “unacceptable for Ecuadoreans to receive more [safety] guarantees than Colombians.”

She added, however, that “agreements like this strengthen relations. It’s better to try to settle things through negotiations, rather than through a legal sentence, even though the International Court of Justice is a mechanism for the peaceful settlement of conflicts.

“But it is not acceptable for it to be done through secret diplomatic negotiations,” she added, pointing out that the content of the binational agreement did not go through the Colombian Congress.

“It’s obvious why not: because the legislators would demand a halt to the spraying.

Amira Armenta, an expert with the Transnational Institute’s Drugs and Democracy programme, wrote in a Sept. 12 article that the settlement would not really change anything because Colombia would continue spraying in border provinces.

According to the latest study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Nariño and Putumayo are the provinces with the highest density of coca cultivation – 22 percent and 13 percent, respectively, of the country’s total coca cultivation in late 2012.

“In the last decade, Nariño has suffered from the highest levels of spraying in the country, and in spite of that it continues to boast the title of biggest producer,” Armenta writes.

The settlement also states that before spraying in a border area, the Colombian government will give the Ecuadorean government 10 days notice, indicating the exact locations and dates of the fumigation.

“This is much more than what could have been achieved in a legal ruling, because it is very difficult for an international court to require a country to assume a commitment of this nature since the country can claim that it affects its sovereignty,” Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, said about the agreement. “But it is possible to achieve when it is a friendly settlement.”

Ecuador and Colombia also agreed to sign a special expedited protocol for addressing complaints from Ecuadorean citizens in border areas. But the protocol, to be adopted “within 15 days” after the settlement was signed Sept. 9, has not yet been announced.

With reporting by Constanza Vieira in Bogotá.

The ecosystem and indigenous people of Yasuní Park are in danger, environmentalists warn. Credit: Iniciativa Yasuní-ITT

By Ángela Meléndez
QUITO, Aug 24 2013 (IPS)

The Ecuadorean government’s decision to allow oil drilling in the Yasuní National Park, one of the most biodiverse areas of the planet, has caused alarm among environmentalists and indigenous people, who are calling for a referendum on the issue.

President Rafael Correa ordered the shelving of the Yasuní-ITT Initiative, a plan to leave oil reserves underground in the Amazon rainforest park in return for international compensation.

He complained that only 13.3 million dollars were contributed by companies, individuals and countries to a trust fund administered by the United Nations since 2007, towards a final goal of 3.6 billion dollars.

The decision announced Aug. 15 gives the state-run oil company Petroamazonas the green light to commence exploration in up to one percent of the area of the park, according to the decree that ended the Yasuní-ITT Initiative.

Opponents warn of the effects on the fauna, flora, and native peoples in voluntary isolation – the Tagaeri and the Taromenane – if drilling goes ahead in Ecuador’s largest protected area, covering 982,000 hectares.

On Thursday Aug. 22, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE), the Confederation of Peoples of Kichwa Nationality (ECUARUNARI), the Confederation of University Students, and environmental organisations like Acción Ecológica presented a proposal for a referendum to the Constitutional Court.

They will need to collect 584,000 signatures – five percent of all registered voters in this country of 15 million people – in support of the petition.

In the proposed referendum, voters would be asked: “Do you agree that the Ecuadorean government should keep the crude in the ITT, known as block 43, underground indefinitely?”

President Correa urged people to collect signatures, and said he was sure that his own proposal to extract crude from Yasuní, for the purpose of boosting public expenditure, would win in a referendum.

The government says an area of less than one-thousandth of Yasuní park, situated in the north of the country, will be affected.

It also claims the isolated native communities will not be impacted, since the fields to be exploited (Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputini – the ITT) are far from the area declared the “untouchable zone”, where they live.

José Lema, the president of the association of geological engineers of Ecuador, told IPS that it is possible that oil could be extracted as the government proposes.

He cited the work Petroamazonas is doing in the Pañacocha field, located in another nature reserve in the north of the country, which has received international recognition for environmental best practices.

“Petroamazonas is carrying out similar work there, and it has had only temporary impacts while building the oil pipeline,” he said.

The expert believes the first thing to be done is to carry out a new assessment of the area in order to redesign the drilling plan.

“There may be changes, because the methodology that was first used (in 1993) was a two-dimensional seismic survey…that determined reserves of 920 million barrels of crude,” he said.

“But once more detailed information is available, there will be a more precise volume assessment, which will no doubt be greater than the original estimate,” he said.

In Lema´s view, the main task will be to adapt the oil rigs that are already in the park, and to bring in equipment for the installation. Then the wells will have to be drilled and the oil pipeline built.

“Every project creates disturbances; the aim is to reduce them as much as possible by using the best technology,” he said.

Wilson Pástor, a former minister of non-renewable resources in the left-leaning administration of Correa, who took office in 2007, says the concerns are unfounded because oil is already being extracted in the park.

“Block 31, which was explored by (Brazilian oil company) Petrobras and now belongs to Petroamazonas, is located within the park,” he said.

He also noted that the Pañacocha field produces 18,000 barrels per day, but the crude is not processed in any way within the protected area.

“The same approach will be used with ITT, since there are already seven oil rigs in the area,” and cluster wells will be drilled. “Previously, one well per platform would be drilled, but now 25 wells are drilled from each rig, occupying less space,” he said.

In Pástor’s view, the most polluting activity is the treatment and separation of water, gas and oil, which mean “in practice setting up a refinery, and the refinery will not be built in the ITT…so the entire intervention will only affect 190 hectares.”

He added that electricity will not be generated in the field and the oil pipeline will not affect the park, as it will be buried in a trench three metres wide filled with biodegradable material.

Evidently, the drilling plans already existed

The former minister also said that oil exploitation would have an additional benefit for the park. “Today, the Yasuní lacks strong institutions to control access to the park, but if Petroamazonas begins work here there will be resources to protect it,” he said.

According to government forecasts, the Tiputini field will produce its first barrels of crude in two years’ time, Tambococha 12 months later, and Ishpingo a year after that.

But civil society organisations are not convinced by the arguments put forward by Correa and his government.

María Paula Romo, of the left-wing party Ruptura 25, who is a former member of the constituent assembly that rewrote the constitution, argues that the government is violating article 57 of the constitution, which bans extraction activities in the territories of isolated peoples.

The article says: “The territories of the peoples living in voluntary isolation are an irreducible and untouchable ancestral possession and all forms of extractive activities shall be forbidden there. The state shall adopt measures to guarantee their lives, enforce respect for self-determination and their intention to remain in isolation, and ensure observance of their rights.”

It adds that “the violation of these rights shall constitute a crime of ethnocide, which shall be classified as such by law.”

Romo told IPS, “Before talking about specifications for wells, the first step is to ask how entry into forbidden territory can be justified in the light of the constitution.”

The justice minister, Lenín Lara, said there are no isolated communities in the oilfields where drilling is planned.

But environmental experts and academics refute this claim.

“The Taromenane are hemmed in on every side. And even if the work is done with the best technology, pressure is going to be put on these peoples,” said journalist and filmmaker Carlos Andrés Vera.

With reporting by Carey L. Biron in Washington, D.C.

President Correa, seen here greeting people in Otavalo in 2011, has frequently clashed with the media, which is largely controlled by the opposition. Credit: Miguel Romero/Presidencia de Ecuador

By Ángela Meléndez
QUITO, Jul 19 2013 (IPS)

Ecuador’s new media law introduces guarantees to democratise communications. But it has come under fire from critics who say it could set limits on investigative journalism. Many doubts will only be answered once its regulations are passed.

The Council for Regulation and Development of Information and Communication, in the process of being established, will be in charge of drawing up the regulations within 60 days of its creation.

The media law approved Jun. 14 and promulgated Jun. 25 also created a Superintendency of Information and Communication which will have powers of unknown scope to penalise noncompliance with the law.

Since the bill was drafted in 2009, important issues have been incorporated. For example, the law establishes the redistribution of radio frequencies in three equal parts: 33 percent private media, 33 percent public media, and 34 percent community media (to go into effect gradually).

It also requires that daily TV programming consist of 60 percent nationally produced content – and 10 percent must come from independent producers. In addition, 50 percent of the music played by radio stations must have been produced, composed or performed in Ecuador, and the stations must comply with the payment of royalties.

Furthermore, broadcast licence-holders will now be limited to one TV station and one FM and one AM radio station, in order to fight the concentration of media in a few hands.

And private advertisers must allocate at least 10 percent of their advertising budget to local or regional media outlets. This article is designed to ensure advertising income for smaller or rural print or broadcast media.

The law prohibits prior censorship as well.

But two matters were included at the last minute and voted in the legislature without previous debate: the prohibition of “media lynching” and the creation of the Superintendency, which is directly linked to the executive branch.

Article 26 prohibits what is described as “media lynching”, or the repetition by one or more media outlets of information aimed at destroying a person’s prestige or public credibility.

In such cases, the Superintendency could take administrative measures like requiring the publication of a public apology “in the outlet or outlets…in the same space, programmes, sections, as many times as the discrediting information was published.”

The Ecuadorean criminal code defines crimes against honour: defamatory slander and libel are described in articles 489 to 502, and may be punished with up to three years in prison if the allegations are made against a public authority.

But media lynching “leaves it to the subjective criteria of those judging whether or not there has been a bad faith action to persecute or harass a person on the part of the media,” said academic and sociologist Hernán Reyes.

In the view of journalist César Ricaurte, head of the Andean Foundation for the Observation and Study of the Media (Fundamedios), the concept of “media lynching” is “highly ambiguous” and “promotes censorship.”

“Press coverage that repeatedly mentions an official implicated in a corruption case could be denounced as ‘media lynching,’ which would bring about self-censorship of the media; they would stop investigating for fear of sanctions,” Ricaurte told IPS.

The law says that noncompliance with ethical regulations, including those on media lynching, may be denounced by any citizen or organisation to the Superintendency of Information and Communication which, once it has verified the complaint, will issue a written warning, unless the nature of the offence merits a sanction or administrative measure.

María Augusta Calle, a lawmaker for the governing Alianza PAIS coalition, said the fears were unfounded. “I think that in 99 percent of the cases, investigative reporting seeks to inform the public and comply with the duties shared by all journalists,” she said in public statements.

“But there is a difference between reporting the news and reporting on people’s private lives,” she added.

In a letter to Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression Catalina Botero said that “any sustained denunciation of corruption that could lead to reduction of the public credibility of a particular official could be classified by the supervisory body as ‘media lynching’ and be subject to the corresponding sanctions.”

Under the new law, this offence does not require the reporter to be aware that the information may be false, or to have been guilty of “manifest negligence” in establishing its veracity, which contravenes the IACHR Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression, Botero added.

The reach of the article on “media lynching” will become clear once concrete circumstances are defined by the regulations.

Another concern is the Superintendency, whose head will be chosen by the Council of Citizen Participation and Social Control from three candidates nominated by leftwing Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa.

The mission of the Superintendency will be “oversight, audit, intervention and control,” according to article 55. It will have the capacity to impose penalties and its resolutions will be binding. Citizens, journalists and the media will have a voice, but not a vote, through a consultative council.

Another body created by the law, the Council of Regulation and Development of Information and Communication, is made up exclusively of representatives of the state, and is tasked with regulating classification of contents and time slots.

One of the first steps taken after the president signed the bill into law was the nomination of members of the Council.

Tamara Merizalde, the former head of the Institute for Children and the Family, will represent the Equality Councils – bodies responsible for ensuring the rights of vulnerable groups, which have not yet been formed.

Patricio Barriga, former under-secretary of political communications for the government, will be President Correa’s delegate. Paulina Mogrovejo was appointed to represent the ombudsman’s office.

Nominations are pending for delegates for the Council of Citizen Participation and Social Control and for the municipalities.

In Ricaurte’s view, the basic problem is not regulation per se, but the fact that it is directly in the hands of the government. “This mechanism goes against that of every democratic society, in which the main focus is the independence of regulators; here, control is handed to the executive branch,” he said.

But journalist Estefanía Montalvo, who is head of communication for the Environment Ministry, believes the law will have a positive effect, because it will force reporters “to check more sources, verify their facts and inform without personal biases.”

“This has been a constant problem in journalism: the value judgments that were always allowed,” Montalvo told IPS. “Now journalists will think twice about disseminating unconfirmed reports.”

In her opinion, “rather than be afraid, we just have to work at doing better journalism,” and the law “is an opportunity for this.”

A Huaorani man holding a hunting spear in a tourist lodge in Tigüino, a community in Yasuní National Park in Ecuador's Amazon region. Credit: Eduardo Valenzuela/IPS

By Ángela Meléndez
QUITO, Jun 5 2013 (IPS)

Reports of another massacre in an isolated indigenous community in Ecuador’s Amazon region cast doubt on the state’s compliance with precautionary measures imposed in favour of uncontacted peoples in 2006 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

According to reports that are being investigated, some 30 Taromenane Indians were killed by members of the rival Huaorani indigenous community, seven years after the Inter-American Commission (IACHR) called for protection for native peoples in voluntary isolation.

The government claims it is doing everything possible, but civil society organisations dispute that.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the alleged Mar. 29 massacre, first heard of in early May, but the inquiry is still in its preliminary stages.

Cawetipe Yeti, the president of the Huaorani Federation of Ecuador, said 30 Taromenane Indians had been killed, including children, in revenge for an earlier incident in which an elderly couple of his ethnic group had been murdered near the Tiguacuno river in Yasuní National Park. Earlier, a member of the Huaorani who claimed to have led the attack reported a lower number of fatalities.

The Taromenane and Tagaeri indigenous communities are the last uncontacted groups in the northeastern Ecuadorean Amazon basin, having shunned contact with the outside world. They live in the “untouchable zone” of over 700,000 hectares created by the government in 1999 to protect the area from activities that could threaten biodiversity and their cultures.

Their latest clashes with members of native communities in partial contact with the outside world, like the Huaorani, have renewed doubts about the effectiveness of the protective measures and drawn criticism of government actions and the impact of the model of development in an area rich in oil, minerals and timber.

In 2006, the IACHR, part of the Organisation of American States human rights system, called on the Ecuadorean state to “adopt effective measures to protect the lives and personal integrity of the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples.”

The resolution added that the authorities should take “the measures necessary to protect the territory inhabited by the beneficiaries from third parties.”

To comply with these requirements, one year later Ecuador launched its “Plan to protect the lives of the Tagaeri-Taromenane uncontacted peoples,” as part of a national policy for indigenous communities living in voluntary isolation.

The stated strategy of the plan is “to assure the survival and physical, cultural and territorial integrity of peoples in voluntary isolation.”

The government banned outsiders from entering the protected zones of isolated peoples for purposes other than essential actions for social and environmental protection.

Excepted from this ban are other indigenous people living in the area, like the Huaorani, who number approximately 4,000 compared to 300 Taromenane and 30 Tagaeri.

While native people’s organisations in this country of 14.6 million people claim that 40 percent of the population is indigenous, only seven percent identified themselves as such in the 2010 census.

Under the government strategy, the armed forces may enter the protected zones for national security reasons, and priority attention is to be paid to the Amazon region ecosystems inhabited by communities in voluntary isolation.

After receiving the reports of the recent massacre, the government said that in 2012 a technical team from the Interior Ministry scouted the jungle in the untouchable zone on about 200 occasions, to monitor the possible presence of uncontacted communities.

The goal of the patrols is “to establish protection plans, as well as actions to avoid contact with settlers from outside or westernised native groups,” the government explained. The team has been carrying out the policy on behalf of voluntarily isolated peoples since 2010.

The government also said visits were made to several non-isolated indigenous communities to collect information about possible sightings of any signs of the protected peoples.

But civil society organisations regard these efforts as inadequate and say that if the protection measures had been more effective, the incidents of violence might have been avoided.

For example, former legislator María Paula Romo said “To regard this as a question of conflicts between ethnic groups or clans is an unacceptable way for (the government) to disassociate itself from its responsibility for what is happening.”

In her view, in addition to the need for concrete action on this conflict, “the fundamental issue should be an honest, thorough review of the model of development in the Amazon region.”

Humberto Cholango, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), agrees. “The conflict cannot be reduced to a confrontation between fraternal peoples,” as that would be to “wilfully adopt a political misreading of the issue,” he told IPS.

“Many have an interest in showing the world that this is ‘a problem between Indians’ rather than what it actually is: the result of an extractive industries policy that has increased the pressure on indigenous peoples. This is a national problem,” said Cholango, leader of the largest Ecuadorean indigenous organisation.

He said that imposition of the model has caused voluntarily isolated peoples to lose their way of life and their habitat, including their food and animals, which compels them to resort to violence, even among themselves, as a defence.

In contrast, Juan Sebastián Medina, the head of the Interior Ministry’s Precautionary Measures Plan, believes that the conflict “cannot be understood as a form of political pressure, nor as a form of pressure from the lumber or fossil fuel industries.

“It has to be understood from the perspective of a world view,” he said in public statements.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said on May 26 that the problem is “extremely complex.” He referred to the request by the United Nations 10 days earlier for the conflict between Amazonian indigenous peoples to be brought to an end.

“The U.N. has just told the Ecuadorean government it must protect the lives of the uncontacted peoples. Great! I’d like them to tell us how,” he said. “It’s very difficult to protect the lives of uncontacted people without contacting them.”

A group of anthropologists sent 16 recommendations to the authorities on May 29, calling for real solutions.

One of the first was for “the state to carry out an in-depth investigation to determine and achieve a comprehensive understanding of the internal factors affecting the Huaorani people, the relationship between the Huaorani and the Taromenane, and other isolated families or groups.”

The anthropologists also proposed that the state include in its analysis factors arising from the political economy of the Amazon region, such as “the extractive model of development linked to fossil fuel exploitation.”

Like CONAIE and organisations working for the rights of indigenous peoples, the anthropologists regard it as “inappropriate to reduce the conflict solely to the confrontation between the Huaorani and Taromenane peoples, while neglecting an analysis of the historical, economic and political circumstances that have exacerbated internal tensions.”

President Correa, meanwhile, said there would be an inquiry into possible omissions and violations on the part of the authorities in their responsibilities for protecting uncontacted peoples. The government is also looking into the possibility of creating a body to be directly in charge of the interests of communities remaining in voluntary isolation.

A Huaorani man armed with traditional spears and his wife and children welcome a group of tourists to the community of Tigüino, located within Yasuní National Park. Credit: Eduardo Valenzuela/IPS

By Ángela Meléndez
QUITO, May 2 2013 (IPS)

The Constitution of Ecuador adopted in 2008 establishes a broad range of rights for indigenous peoples and nationalities, including the right to prior consultation, which gives them the opportunity to influence decisions that affect their lives.

But this right has yet to be fully translated into legislation, as the bill for a Law on Consultation with Indigenous Communities, Peoples and Nationalities is still being studied by the National Assembly.

Article 57, section 7 of the constitution guarantees “free, prior and informed consultation, within a reasonable period of time, on plans and programmes for exploration, exploitation and sale of non-renewable resources located on their lands which could have environmental or cultural impacts on them.”

The constitution also stipulates the right of indigenous peoples “to share in the profits earned from these projects and to receive compensation for social, cultural and environmental damages caused to them. The consultation that must be conducted by the competent authorities shall be mandatory and timely.”

“If the consent of the consulted community is not obtained, steps provided for by the Constitution and the law shall be taken,” it adds.

Legal grounds for consultation are also established in Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO), which Ecuador ratified in 1998, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted in 2007.

Nevertheless, recent mining and oil drilling projects have put the government’s commitment to respecting the right to consultation to the test, and spurred indigenous organisations to take action.

On Nov. 28, 2012, hundreds of indigenous representatives converged in Quito to protest the lack of consultation prior to the 11th oil auction round, in which exploration blocks containing an estimated total of 1.6 billion barrels of crude oil would be put up for bids from private companies.

At the time, Domingo Peas, a leader of the Achuar indigenous ethnic group, declared that “the government says it has carried out prior consultation, but this is not true.”

“The consultations carried out among the peoples and nationalities in the areas of influence are invalid, because there was no participation by indigenous peoples and nationalities in determining the way they were conducted, they did not respect their traditional methods of decision-making, and cultural aspects, such as language, were not adequately taken into account,” he stressed.

Overall, said Peas, the consultations “were neither prior, nor free, nor informed, and were conducted in bad faith.”

The president of the influential Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), Humberto Cholango, believes that the authorities have not done enough.

“Prior consultation is still pending, we have still not seen the results we would like to see. We need the law to be approved; that would be a major advance,” he told Tierramérica*.

The draft law, comprising 29 articles, refers to consultation on legislative measures and establishes four stages: preparation; a public call for participation and registration; the actual holding of the consultation; and analysis of the results and conclusion.

In accordance with the law, the government will determine if a proposed bill affects the rights of certain communities, in which case the National Assembly will convene a prior consultation that will be conducted through the National Electoral Council.

Lourdes Tibán, an indigenous National Assembly member from the leftist opposition movement Pachakutik, told Tierramérica that adoption of this law is crucial, because “it will guarantee the participation of indigenous nationalities in decisions on future laws that directly affect them, and will therefore prevent a lack of consensus.”

Once this legislation is in force, other major bills can be addressed, such as the proposed law on water resources, on which debate has been postponed since 2010 precisely due to the resistance posed by indigenous peoples. One of their key concerns is that the proposals made during a prior consultation process will not be included in the final text of the law that was submitted to consultation.

A number of other bills, such as those for laws on culture and land, are also on hold for the same reason.

This is the heart of the conflict.

One year ago, President Rafael Correa stated in one of his regular Saturday broadcasts that non-governmental organisations “want prior consultations to be popular consultations and to be binding; that means that for every step we want to take, we will need to ask the community for permission.”

“This is extremely serious. This is not what the international agreements say. This would not mean acting in the interests of the majorities, but rather in the interest of unanimity. It would be impossible to govern that way,” he declared.

In response to these statements, indigenous organisations sought reinforcement, calling on agencies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the ILO to supervise the implementation of prior consultation.

In fact, indigenous communities in Ecuador have already turned to some of these mechanisms in the past. In 2003, the Quechua community of Sarayaku filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against the state for authorising oil exploration in their territory, without prior consultation.

The community, located in the province of Pastaza, in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest region, denounced damages to their territory, culture and economy. In June 2012, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of the community and against the state.

The government is still studying how to pay the required compensation – a total of 1,398,000 dollars for material and moral damages and legal costs – and how to finish repairing the physical damage caused.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Excerpt:

Ecuador’s attempt to introduce institutional changes in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has been frustrated for now. Quito is seeking allies to create parallel regional mechanisms, but the risks of losing at this game are high, according to experts and users of the regional justice system.

The proposal that Ecuador took to the 44th Extraordinary General Assembly of the Organisation of American States (OAS) focused on three aspects: limiting the IACHR’s power to impose precautionary measures, debating the financing of the Special Rapporteurship on Freedom of Expression, and changing the IACHR’s headquarters from Washington to a city in Latin America.

Because of the lack of support for its proposal, Ecuador threatened to withdraw from the Inter-American system of human rights. But in the end, an alternative solution put forward by Argentina caused the Ecuadorean government to back down.

The debate on reforming the IACHR remains open, and that is “a victory,” according to Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño. But he stated emphatically that one of the main goals of his government is to create a human rights system within the framework of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) or the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

“We have proposed building a South American human rights system,” he said on his return from the OAS meeting, held Mar. 22. There were “several meetings and we are very close to reaching an agreement,” he said.

But while waiting for this proposal to crystallise, Ecuador is hoping for further progress in the forthcoming OAS meeting in June.

The inter-American system for the protection of human rights is made up of two autonomous organs: the Washington-based IACHR, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in San José, Costa Rica.

Their main function is to oversee compliance with the American Convention on Human Rights, adopted in 1969.

There are voices in Ecuador who say that in some cases, the inter-American system has achieved results that the national justice system has not.

Harold Burbano, a legal adviser with the Regional Human Rights Advisory Foundation (INREDH), says “80 percent of the 25 cases we have litigated are in the inter-American system, which shows that (Ecuadorean) justice has been ineffective,” he told IPS.

Several cases did not reach the Inter-American Court because the state “accepted friendly settlements,” he acknowledged.

Burbano clarified that most of the cases are at the investigation stage, awaiting “a report with recommendations to the state in order to avoid being taken by the IACHR to the Inter-American Court.”

The IACHR’s political powers include carrying out on-site visits and issuing recommendations and reports. It also has quasi-judicial functions: receiving complaints, determining their admissibility, requesting precautionary measures by states and taking cases to the Inter-American Court.

The Court adjudicates cases referred to it, issues opinions on legal matters and adopts provisional measures for the protection of persons or groups. Its rulings are binding and are not subject to appeal.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, the IACHR took on 83 Ecuadorean cases and issued 12 friendly settlements, while another 12 cases have been referred to the Court.

An emblematic case involved the indigenous Quechua people of Sarayaku, who in 2003 filed a complaint against the state to the IACHR for oil industry actions that threatened human rights within their territory.

In June 2012 the Court issued a sentence condemning the Ecuadorean state. But the government has not yet paid reparations, and it has not complied with the requirement of previously consulting indigenous communities about economic activity in their territories.

The reforms of the IACHR spearheaded by Ecuador would have affected the independence and effective capacity of the Commission to promote and defend human rights in the region, Xavier Buendía, the president of the Centro de Observación Ciudadana (Citizens’ Observatory), told IPS.

Buendía concurred with one of the things Quito emphasises: the need for the IACHR to improve actions to promote human rights.

“In addition to prevention, it should increase the levels of awareness, information and empowerment, and foment more activism among both the public authorities and society as a whole,” he said.

According to Buendía, “a major problem is that there are no deadlines for the Court’s rulings.”

However, in his view, it is “rather strange” to attempt to create a human rights system at the heart of UNASUR, as “this means creating a logical counterweight to the inter-American system.”

A parallel justice system “is not that easy to create,” and the idea is more likely to be “an escape clause” for Ecuador, Burbano said. “The Commission and the Court have been fundamental underpinnings for human rights in the region.”

From a different point of view, the legal adviser for the Ecumenical Commission on Human Rights, César Duque, said “the government’s proposals are intended to strengthen” the IACHR.

But on the other hand, “they could lead to its weakening, when it comes to restricting the IACHR’s capacity to dictate precautionary measures and to raise funds to carry out the full extent of its mission,” Duque told IPS.

Now the countries in the region are awaiting the outcome, but “most states are not interested in reforming, but rather in strengthening, the IACHR; none of them have spoken of changing its competencies,” he said.

The state of Ecuador itself has used the system. In 2011 it requested, and obtained, from the IACHR precautionary measures to prevent the execution of Nelson Serrano, an Ecuadorean man sentenced to death in the United States.

And in 2010, for the first time since it was created, the IACHR accepted a lawsuit against another state, when Ecuador accused Colombia of killing Ecuadorean citizen Franklin Aisalla during Colombia’s bombing of a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) camp located within Ecuadorean territory.

Duque does not think Ecuador will really pull out of the system; this is a “last ditch effort” that will get it nowhere, he said.

It’s a strategy to exert pressure, in the face of possible rulings on the violation of free expression in the current confrontation between the government and the media, he said. “The state is on the defensive because it sees the media as political actors opposed to the administration.”

Teenage girls are also at risk of gender violence in Ecuador. Credit: Gonzalo Ortiz/IPS

By Ángela Meléndez
QUITO, Mar 25 2013 (IPS)

Ecuador hopes to move forward in the fight against violence against women by typifying femicide – gender-motivated killings – as a specific crime in the new penal code.

The first statistics on gender violence in this South American country were presented in 2012, indicating that 60 percent of women had suffered some kind of mistreatment.

The aim now is to include the crime of femicide in the penal code reform introduced in Congress in late 2011. The new code is expected to be approved by the legislature to be sworn in on May 24.

The bill describes femicide as the murder of a woman “because she is a woman, in clearly established circumstances.”

It goes on to describe these circumstances: the perpetrator unsuccessfully attempted to establish or re-establish an intimate relationship with the victim; they had family or conjugal relations, lived together, were boyfriend/girlfriend, friends or workmates; the murder was the result of the “reiterated manifestation of violence against the victim” or of group rites, with or without a weapon.

Femicide is to be punishable by up to 28 years in prison – similar to the sentence handed to hired killers.

What prompted Ecuador to typify the crime of femicide? First of all, the evidence.

Academic studies and police reports indicate that crimes against women have increased sharply. The Metropolitan Observatory of Citizen Security reported 21 femicides in Quito in 2012 and 28 in 2011.

In the most populous city, Guayaquil, on the Pacific coast, of 137 murders of women committed between January 2010 and June 2012, 47 were femicides and just four ended in prison sentences, according to the report “The paths of impunity”, presented Mar. 14 by the Ecuadorean Centre for Women’s Promotion and Action (CEPAM).

Another reason that femicide was classified as a crime was the shockwaves sent out by recent murders of women.

Karina del Pozo, 20, went missing in Quito on Feb. 20. Her body was found eight days later in an empty lot on the north side of the city, showing signs of abuse and a blow to the head that caused her death.

According to the police investigation, she was allegedly killed by three young male acquaintances when she refused to have sexual relations with one of them, after a party which they attended together.

In mid-February, the body of a 16-year-old adolescent girl was found in a burlap sack in the Andean province of Cotopaxi in the centre-north of the country, with signs of sexual violence. And on Feb. 28, 24-year-old Gabriela León was strangled and her body was dumped in a bag in the northern city of Ibarra.

In every case, the suspects or confessed murderers were men.

Thousands of people took to the streets to demand greater security, and the families of victims organised to demand that femicide be classed as a specific crime.

Femicide is “the murder of a girl, teenager or woman because she is a woman or because of the cultural constructions according to which men close to women feel that they have power over them,” left-wing lawmaker María Paula Romo of the opposition party Ruptura 25 told IPS.

Psychologist Angélica Palacios, who specialises in protection from sexual crimes, said “this issue involves power relationships within the family, labour place and social systems.”

Romo said the inclusion of femicide in the new penal code was in response to “the need to visibilise this kind of extreme violence against women, which has characteristics that make it very different from other crimes against life.”

But she said she did not believe that the mere classification of the crime would bring about changes. “Typifying it will not help prevent or avoid it. But this is a tool to raise awareness, to call things by their name, to train and sensitise people in the justice system, and even to obtain statistical information that enables us to work to change things.”

Mauro Andino, who belongs to the party of left-leaning President Rafael Correa and is the chair of the congressional Justice Commission, told IPS that the aim of the penal code reform was to safeguard the rights of women, because “it is different when a woman dies because of a robbery than when she dies as a result of harassment and violence at the hands of her partner.”

According to the National Survey on Family Relations and Gender Violence 2012, of the women who said they had suffered gender violence (60 percent), 76 percent had experienced it at the hands of their current or ex-partners.

The survey also found that two out of five women had suffered physical violence, and one out of four had suffered sexual violence.

Gender violence was present in both cities (61.4 percent) and rural areas (58.7 percent), and it affected women from all socioeconomic levels: both the poorest quintile and the richest quintile had rates above 50 percent.

Ecuador thus follows on the heels of other Latin American countries that have adopted femicide in their legislation: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.

However, in several of those countries – most notoriously Mexico and Guatemala – the classification of femicide as a crime has failed to reduce the wave of violence against women.

Rafael Correa celebrates his re-election at the Palacio de Carondelet, in Quito, cheered by a crowd of supporters. Credit: Martín Sánchez/IPS

By Leisa Sánchez and Ángela Meléndez
QUITO, Feb 18 2013 (IPS)

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa secured yesterday his third term in office by a landslide, after vowing to radically deepen his project of citizens’ revolution by making the changes achieved thus far “irreversible”, fully achieving the goals of eradicating poverty, transforming the model of production and consolidating the “rule of the people”.

Initial data from the National Electoral Council give the centre-left candidate 56.7 percent of the votes in the national elections held this Sunday, Feb. 17, putting him well ahead of his greatest challenger, right-wing candidate Guillermo Lasso, with 23.3 percent.

This ample margin means Correa can begin his third consecutive term since 2007 without the need for the runoff required under the constitution unless the leading candidate obtains either 50 percent of the valid vote or 40 percent with a 10-point advantage over the nearest contender.

While Correa maintains that his government will continue to focus on social transformation, he noted that a change in the model of production and job creation would be the priorities this term.

This strategy is reflected in his choice of running mate, as the profile of vice president-elect Jorge Glas is more technical than political, and in Correa’s agenda, which involves promoting change through projects in the fields of oil production, energy resources, water, electricity and information and telecommunication technologies.

This transformation, which had already begun with restrictions on imports of consumer goods and higher tariffs for luxury items, will demand more value added on national products and strengthening popular and solidarity economy schemes, but without excluding private capital involvement.

Oil, Ecuador’s largest source of foreign revenue, with a record 98 dollars per 159-litre barrel in 2012, will continue to underpin the government’s investment in social programmes, which last year absorbed 15.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and are projected to require 16.6 percent in 2013.

According to the National Planning and Development Secretariat, public investment grew six-fold in the last six years, standing at 6.29 billion dollars in 2012.

Speaking to the press following his second re-election, the leader of the governing Alianza País (AP) party said that the chief goal for the next four years would be to make “irreversible the shift in power relations in favour of the people and the great majorities” through the implementation of “solid economic policies, prioritising the ‘social debt’ (over debt to foreign creditors), but without neglecting efficiency”.

Correa stressed that “the challenge is to move more quickly but in the same direction”, adding that the people have confirmed at the polls their desire to “bury once and for all the ‘partocracy’ that has inflicted so much damage” on the country, in reference to the monopoly of power held by political parties.

Correa is confident that the massive support he received from voters will give him a large majority in parliament, which will thus be able to pass key bills on issues such as communications, water, land and criminal code reform, which had been stalled until now.

On Feb. 17, Ecuadorians also elected 137 members of the National Legislative Assembly and five Andean Parliament representatives.

Legislator Virgilio Hernández, re-elected under the AP ticket, told IPS that one of the great tasks ahead is to “build a post-oil Ecuador, going beyond a commodity-based economy”, while “making major changes to achieve energy sovereignty, continue developing the country’s road system and implementing large infrastructure works”.

He also spoke of the need to advance towards “a true and radical agrarian revolution” and implement credit and technology policies that will guarantee food sovereignty and security.

Hernández noted that significant progress has already been made, but social welfare, health and education are permanent issues on the government’s agenda. Work is needed to “ensure the full enjoyment of rights and social welfare” by all Ecuadorians, and achieve greater wealth distribution, with “more equality and social justice”.

Nonetheless, economic performance will be decisive in determining whether the Correa administration will retain its level of popularity, Hernán Ramos, a political and economic analyst, told IPS.

Ramos believes that one of the key factors of the president’s stability is the steady growth of GDP, fuelled by favourable oil prices, increasing government revenue and a high level of domestic consumption.

The government’s “project would suffer if the economy’s stability were to waver” for any reason, even an international crisis, Ramos cautioned.

In terms of politics, the analyst observed that Correa’s three victories at the polls had succeeded in dealing a mortal blow to a political leadership that was “historically responsible for the crises that dragged the country down”, as with this new win “the opposition has been broken”.

Unlike in 2007, when he took office for the first time, Correa now has several advantages. Firstly, the political experience gained after six years at the country’s helm; secondly, the strength gathered by his movement; and thirdly, ironclad media protection (in the form of a media regulatory body created in a 2011 referendum to stop media excesses), Ramos explained.

The president had promised that this would be the last time he ran, as he considered it in the country’s “best interest”. However, his movement lacks a figure strong enough to replace him after this term, a political weakness that could be overcome by AP if “it succeeds in grooming new leaders that can at least consolidate its political leadership in the country”, Ramos said.

Counting elections and referendums, Correa achieved his ninth victory at the polls on Sunday and holds an indisputable leadership after six years in which, in his own words, he “re-founded the nation” with a new constitution in 2008 that launched an era of good living and turned the state into the leading economic and political agent.

When his third term is up in 2017, Correa will have completed a decade in power.