ABOUT THE AUTHOR Felipe Botero is head of programmes for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) in the Andean region, implementing strategies to strengthen community resilience to organized crime and crime prevention, researching the regional criminal ecosystems and leading the GI-TOC’s presence in the region. [...] On 9 January 2024, the recently elected president, Daniel Noboa, said that the country was in a state of ‘internal armed conflict’ against 22 criminal groups that he described as ‘narco-terrorists’.1 The escalation of violent crime in Ecuador started to make international news in 2020 with the assassination of Alias Rasquiña, the leader of the most powerful criminal group in the country, Los Chone. [...] Since Villavicencio’s murder, several incidents have occurred, including the arrest of the Colombian hitmen involved in his death and their subsequent murders in a prison, which has deprived the authorities of crucial evidence in the investigation.6 The year 2023 ended as the most violent recorded in the history of Ecuador as the homicide rate reached 46.5 per 100 000 inhabitants, nine times highe. [...] Moreover, the cocaine market score has increased by 1.5 on the scale of 1 to 10 since the previous version of the Index (published in 2021), making it the most pervasive criminal market in the country (Figure 1). [...] The dynamics of the arms trafficking market at the same time shifted, from predominantly provision of weapons to Colombian criminal organizations to the supply of weapons to local criminal groups fighting to control their territories and to secure their share of the cocaine trade.
- Pages
- 11
- Published in
- Switzerland
