Ecuador imposes fourth night-time curfew of the year in key drug-trafficking provinces
President Daniel Noboa formalised the night-time curfew from 1 to 10 November in five coastal provinces. The measure restricts movement between midnight and 5:00 a.m.
Ecuador imposes fourth night-time curfew of the year in key drug-trafficking provinces
Ecuador's president, Daniel Noboa, formalised the night-time curfew in five provinces on the country's coast, according to contrapunto.com. The measure will be in effect from 1 to 10 November and prohibits movement between 00:00 and 05:00 local time (05:00–10:00 GMT).
The affected provinces are Guayas, Los Ríos, Manabí, Esmeraldas—which borders Colombia—and El Oro, which borders Peru. These zones are part of the route used by criminal organisations to export drugs abroad.
Noboa reformed the executive decree on Thursday evening from 15 September, by which he had declared a sixty-day state of exception. The reform adds the suspension of the right to freedom of movement in those five provinces during the stated period.
The decree justifies the measure by noting that criminal violence persists in the region despite "sustained institutional deployment", and that "operational limitations subsist to confront certain threats and carry out specialised interventions under conditions that allow reducing risks to the civilian population".
This is the fourth night-time curfew applied in Ecuador so far this year. The previous one was in effect between 17 and 30 September in four of these same provinces and during the same hours. Noboa stated last Wednesday that during that period "there were 40 per cent fewer crimes" and "the weeks with the lowest homicides of the year" were recorded.
Ecuador has been under a state of "internal armed conflict" since 2024, as declared by the president, who has referred to criminal gangs as "terrorists". To address this situation, Noboa has resorted to successive states of exception and curfews concentrated in the provinces with the highest rates of violence.
Despite these measures, Ecuador closed 2025 with a record 9,283 homicides, a figure that places it among the most violent countries in Latin America.
Source: Google News EC — Crime