The Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDH) has been documenting these cases since the militarization of public security was decreed in Ecuador in January 2024, when President Daniel Noboa declared a state of “internal armed conflict.”

The CDH records expresses that cases are focused mainly in coastal provinces—including Los Rios, Guayas, and Esmeraldas—and that the victims are for the most part young men from working-class neighborhoods, though adolescents are also among them.

In December 2025, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted precautionary measures for 26 people who had disappeared following military operations, as well as for six women involved in the search for them.

Among the reported incidents, the case of four children from the Las Malvinas neighborhood in Guayaquil is the only one to date that has resulted in criminal convictions.

A court in Guayas subsequently convicted 16 military personnel of enforced disappearance, and in March 2026, the Constitutional Court ruled that the four minors were victims of this crime, ordering reparations for their families.

The Ecuadorian State later publicly acknowledged its responsibility and offered apologies to the families.

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