The National Assembly should modify provisions in its constitutional reform proposal to ensure that it respects Ecuador’s international human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said today. On June 26, 2014, the president of the National Assembly, a member of the government official party, submitted a proposal to the Constitutional Court that would revise 17 articles of the Ecuadorian Constitution. Among other concerns, the changes could limit citizens’ ability to challenge...

Ecuador’s National Assembly passed a sweeping Organic Law on Communication. One year later, Reporters Without Borders (RWB) is deeply concerned about the state of information freedom in the country. Initially, the law was seen as a means of . The law establishes a new regulatory framework. In addition, the statute attempts to define the craft of providing news. Our organization opposes that effort. The law does include several . But the government has not provided specific ways to...

For the first time ever, Reporters Without Borders is publishing a list of profiles of “100 information heroes” for World Press Freedom Day (3 May).Through their courageous work or activism, these “100 heroes” help to promote the freedom enshrined in article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the freedom to “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” They put their ideals in the service of...

(Washington, D.C.) - ’s President Rafael Correa should end the use of criminal defamation laws to target his critics, Human Rights Watch said today. The prosecution and convictions of the opposition legislator José Cléver Jiménez Cabrera and two union members for slandering the president violates their right to freedom of expression under international human rights law, Human Rights Watch said. “President Correa has long made it clear that he’s willing...

Britain and Ecuador have failed to break the deadlock over the unresolved asylum case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino met with British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Monday to search for a diplomatic solution over Assange, who has been holed up inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for almost a year. They agreed to set up a working group to work on the issue and to continue communicating. Assange took refuge in the embassy to avoid...

Reporters Without Borders hopes for quick results from the investigation into journalist Fausto Valdivieso’s murder yesterday in Guayaquil. The motive is not yet known but press reports quoted local sources as saying he had been the target of a murder attempt 24 hours earlier and had received threats. A former employee of privately-owned TV stations Ecuavisa, Teleamazonas and TC Televisión, Valdivieso still worked intermittently as an independent journalist while pursuing...

QUITO: The Ecuadorian Finance Co., Inc. (COFIEC), a bank that was seized a decade ago by the former Deposit Guarantee Agency (AGD) would be the legal vehicle used by the Ecuadorian state to conduct financial transactions with Iran. The Central Bank of Ecuador (BCE) decided to conduct financial transactions through COFIEC as a part of financial cooperation agreements between Ecuador and Iran, as recorded in the minutes of the meeting that both countries held on January 12. The bilateral...

The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, better known by its acronym "ALBA," strongly condemned the current violence in Syria on Sunday. But the ALBA group wasn't condemning the slaughter of civilians by the Assad dictatorship, but violence that it said was being committed by "irregular groups supported by foreign powers." The ALBA group, which consists of Latin America's far-left led countries Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua and a handful of Caribbean...

Iran's president on Tuesday lauded his country's newly launched Spanish-language satellite TV channel, saying it would deal a blow to "dominance seekers" - remarks that were an apparent jab at the U.S. and the West. The launch is Tehran's latest effort to reach out to friendly governments in Latin America and follows Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's four-nation tour of the region earlier in January, which included stops in Cuba and visits to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador. It also comes...

Will the Inter-American human rights system survive beyond January 25? This is one of the decisions that will be put to the meeting of ambassadors to the Permanent Council of the Organization of Americans States on that day. Far from being a organizational tweak, the proposed overhaul of the way the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) functions would ratify a disgraceful political offensive by certain member states against one of its components, an important mechanism in the...