Ecuador is a country located in South America, bordering Colombia and
Peru. The official language is Spanish, as well as Quechua and Shuar are
recognized. Ethnically mixed people are 71% and 93% are Christians. In
the area of 2,56,000 sq km, the population is about 1,77,15,000.
Individual or group ownership of any media is prohibited to ensure
plurality and diversity of media. Every citizen has the right to develop
and retain his or her own cultural identity. Older people, pregnant
women, people with disabilities, people in prisons and those suffering
from catastrophic or highly complex diseases will receive priority and
specialized care in the public and private health sectors. Pregnant and
lactating mothers should not be discriminated against for their
condition. Both sons and daughters have equal rights in the family.
Government employees, at the beginning and end of their tenure, will
present a financial statement containing their total assets and
liabilities. Loans will not be accuried from citizens unless there is a
financial capacity to repay the loan. No one's salary will be reduced
due to physical disability.
These are positive aspects. Now let's discuss the negative aspects.
Acknowledging the existence of so-called indigenous groups, they have
been given special privileges - which are in conflict with democracy.
Permission has been granted to take as many children as desired in the
constitution, where the world's population is eight billion. Religious
education system is approved.
Admirable Articles of Ecuador's Constitution
Article 12
The human right to water is essential and cannot be waived. Water constitutes a national strategic asset for use by the public and it is unalienable, not subject to a statute of limitations, immune from seizure and essential for life.
Article 13
Persons and community groups have the right to safe and permanent access to healthy, sufficient and nutritional food, preferably produced locally and in keeping with their various identities and cultural traditions.
The Ecuadorian State shall promote food sovereignty.
Article 14
The right of the population to live in a healthy and ecologically balanced environment that guarantees sustainability and the good way of living (sumak kawsay), is recognized.
Environmental conservation, the protection of ecosystems, biodiversity and the integrity of the country's genetic assets, the prevention of environmental damage, and the recovery of degraded natural spaces are declared matters of public interest.
Article 15
The State shall promote, in the public and private sectors, the use of environmentally clean technologies and nonpolluting and low-impact alternative sources of energy. Energy sovereignty shall not be achieved to the detriment of food sovereignty nor shall it affect the right to water.
The development, production, ownership, marketing, import, transport, storage and use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, highly toxic persistent organic pollutants, internationally prohibited agrochemicals, and experimental biological technologies and agents and genetically modified organisms that are harmful to human health or mat jeopardize food sovereignty or ecosystems, as well as the introduction of nuclear residues and toxic waste into the country's territory, are forbidden.
Article 20
The State shall guarantee the conscience clause for all persons, professional secrecy and the confidentiality of the sources of those who inform, issue their opinions through the media or other forms of communication or who work in any communication activity.
Article 21
Persons have the right to build and uphold their own cultural identity, to decide their belonging to one or various cultural communities, and to express these choices; the right to aesthetic freedom; the right to learn about the historical past of their cultures and to gain access to their cultural heritage; to disseminate their own cultural expressions and to have access to diverse cultural expressions.
Culture cannot be used as an excuse when infringing rights recognized in the Constitution.
Article 22
Persons have the right to develop their creative capacity, to the commendable and steady exercise of cultural and artistic activities, and to benefit from the protection of moral and heritage rights that pertain to them as a result of the scientific, literary or artistic productions of which they are the authors.
Article 23
Persons have the right to gain access to and participate in public spaces as a sphere for deliberation, cultural exchange, social cohesiveness and the promotion of equality in diversity. The right to disseminate in public spaces one's own cultural manifestations shall be exercised without any constraint other than those provided for by the law, subject to the principles of the Constitution.
Article 24
Persons have the right to recreation and leisure, the practice of sports and free time.
Article 25
Persons have the right to enjoy the benefits and applications of scientific progress and ancestral wisdom.
Article 26
Education is a right of persons throughout their lives and an unavoidable and mandatory duty of the State. It constitutes a priority area for public policymaking and state investment, the guarantee of equality and social inclusion and the indispensable condition for the good way of living. Persons, families and society have the right and responsibility to participate in education.
Article 27
Education will focus on the human being and shall guarantee holistic human development, in the framework of respect for human rights, a sustainable environment, and democracy; education shall be participatory, compulsory, intercultural, democratic, inclusive and diverse, of high quality and humane; it shall promote gender equity, justice, solidarity and peace; it shall encourage critical faculties, art and sports, individual and community initiatives, and the development of competencies and capabilities to create and work.
Education is indispensable for knowledge, exercise of rights and building a sovereign country and it is a key strategy for national development.
Article 35
Elderly persons, girls, children and adolescents, pregnant women, persons with disabilities, persons in prison and those who suffer from disastrous or highly complex diseases shall receive priority and specialized care in the public and private sectors. The same priority care shall be received by persons in situations of risk, victims of domestic and sexual violence, child mistreatment, natural or manmade disasters. The State shall provide special protection to persons who are doubly vulnerable.
Article 73
The State shall apply preventive and restrictive measures on activities that might lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems and the permanent alteration of natural cycles.
The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that might definitively alter the nation's genetic assets is forbidden.
Article 159
The Armed Forces and the National Police Force shall be obedient and not deliberative; they shall fulfill their mission strictly subject to civilian power and the Constitution.
The authorities of the Armed Forces and the National Police Force shall be responsible for the orders that are given. Obedience of orders from their superiors shall not exonerate those who carry them out from being held liable for them.
Article 163 (Part of it)
The National Police Force is a state institution that is civilian, armed, technical, structured by ranks, disciplined, professional and highly specialized, whose mission is to provide for public safety and law and order, and to protect the free exercise of rights and security of persons in the national territory.
Article 191 (Part of it)
The Office of the Attorney for the Defense of the People shall provide technical, timely, efficient, effective and free-of-charge legal services to support and legally advise the rights of persons in all matters and institutions.
Article 231
Civil servants shall present, without exception, at the beginning and end of their term of office and according to the periodicity set by law, a sworn statement regarding their net worth, which shall include both their assets and liabilities, as well as the authorization, if necessary, to lift the secrecy of their bank accounts; whoever tails to comply with this requirement shall not be sworn into office. The members of the Armed Forces and the National Police Force shall submit an additional statement of net worth, prior to being promoted and retiring.
The Office of the Comptroller General shall examine and crosscheck the statements and shall investigate those cases where illicit enrichment is alleged. The failure to submit this statement at the end of one's term of office or any unsubstantiated inconsistency between the statements shall lead to the presumption of illicit enrichment.
When there is severe evidence of cover-ups or use of fronts, the Office of the Comptroller General will be able to request similar statements from third parties linked to the person holding or having held public office.
Article 232
Those who have vested interests in those areas that they shall be monitoring or regulating or who represent those who have these vested interests cannot be public officials or members of the board of directors of institutions that perform state control or regulatory powers.
Public servants shall refrain from acting in those cases where their vested interests clash with those of the body or institution where they are providing their services.
Article 233
No public servant shall be exempt from being held accountable for his/her actions in the performance of his/her duties or for his/her omissions and shall be held liable administratively, civilly, and criminally for the management and administration of public funds, assets or resources.
Public servants and the delegates or representatives of the senior management committees of State institutions shall be subject to the sanctions established for the offenses of embezzlement, bribery, extortion and illicit enrichment. The proceedings to prosecute them and the corresponding penalties shall not be subject to any statute of limitations and, in these cases, the trials shall begin and even continue in the absence of the persons charged. These norms shall also be applicable to those who participate in these offenses even when they do not have the above-mentioned qualities.
Article 282
The State shall make laws for the use and access to land that must fulfill social and environmental functions. A national land fund, established by law, shall regulate the equitable access of campesinos to land.
Large estate farming and land concentration is forbidden, as is the monopolizing or privatizing of water and sources thereof.
The State shall regulate the use and management of irrigation water for food production, abiding by the principles of equity, efficiency and environmental sustainability.
Article 283
The economic system is socially oriented and mutually supportive; it recognizes the human being as a subject and an end; it tends towards a dynamic, balanced relationship among society, State and the market, in harmony with nature; and its objective is to ensure the production and reproduction of the material and immaterial conditions that can bring about the good way of living.
The economic system shall be comprised of public, private, mixed-economy, grassroots solidarity forms of economic organization, and others as established by the Constitution. The grassroots solidarity economy shall be regulated pursuant to the law and shall include cooperative, associative and community sectors.
Article 286
At all levels of government, public finances shall be conducted in a sustainable, responsible and transparent manner, and shall strive towards economic buoyancy. Permanent outlays shall be financed by permanent revenues.
Ongoing outlays for health, education and justice shall be given priority and may, on an exceptional basis, be funded by nonpermanent revenues.
Article 287
Any legal norm creating an obligation financed by public resources shall establish the respective source of financing. Only institutions of public law may be financed by special charges and contributions as established by law.
Article 288
Public procurement shall meet criteria of efficiency, transparency, quality, and social and environmental responsibility. Priority shall be given to domestic products and services, in particular those originating in the grassroots solidarity economy and in micro, small and medium-sized production units.
Article 308
Financial activities are a service of public interest and may be exercised, with the prior authorization of the State, in accordance with the law. Their basic aim shall be to safeguard deposits and meet financing needs to achieve the country's development objectives. Financial activities shall perform an efficient intermediary role enabling the resources deposited to bolster domestic investment in production and socially and environmentally responsible consumption.
The State shall foster access to financial services and the democratizing of credit. Practices of collusion, anatocism and usury are forbidden.
The regulation and control of the private financial sector shall not transfer the responsibility of bank solvency, nor imply any guarantee by the State. Managers of financial institutions and those controlling the capital thereof shall be held liable for the solvency of said institutions. The freezing or arbitrary or widespread withholding of funds or deposits in public or private financial institutions is forbidden.
Article 314
The State shall be responsible for the provision of the public services of drinking and irrigation water, sanitation, electricity, telecommunications, roads, seaport and airport facilities, and others as established by law.
The State shall ensure that public services and the provision thereof observe the principles of obligation, generality, uniformity, efficiency, responsibility, universality, accessibility, regularity, continuity and quality. The State shall take steps to ensure that the prices and fees of public services are equitable, and shall establish the monitoring and regulation thereof.
Article 317
Nonrenewable natural resources are part of the unalienable heritage of the State and are not subject to a statute of limitations. In the management of these resources, the State shall give priority to responsibility between generations, the conservation of nature, the charging of royalties or other non-tax contributions and corporate shares; and shall minimize the negative impacts of an environmental, cultural, social and economic nature.
Article 318
Water is part of the country's strategic heritage for public use; it is the unalienable property of the State and is not subject to a statute of limitations. It is a vital element for nature and human existence. Any form of water privatization is forbidden.
The management of water shall be exclusively public or community-based. The public service of sanitation and the supply of drinking and irrigation water shall be provided only by legal entities of the State or communities.
The State shall bolster the management and operating of community initiatives with regard to the management of water and provision of public services, by encouraging alliances between public and community bodies for the provision of services.
The State, through the sole authority for water, shall be directly responsible for planning and managing water resources for human consumption, irrigation to guarantee food sovereignty, ecological wealth and productive activities, in this order of priority. State authorization will be required for the use of water for productive purposes by the public, private and grassroots solidarity sectors, pursuant to the law.
Article 328 (Part of it)
Every year, the State shall establish and review the basic wage set by law, and the application thereof shall be general and mandatory.
Article 330 (Part of it)
Any reduction in pay for any circumstance related to the condition of a worker with a disability is forbidden.
Article 361
The State shall exercise leadership of the system through the national health authorities, shall be responsible for national health policymaking, and shall set standards for, regulate and monitor all health-related activities, as well as the functioning of sector entities.
Article 365
For no reason shall public or private institutions or healthcare professionals refuse emergency care. This refusal shall be punishable by law.
Article 388
The State shall allocate the resources needed for scientific research, technological development, innovation, scientific training, restoration and development of ancestral wisdom, and the dissemination of knowledge. A percentage of these resources shall be earmarked for funding projects by means of competitive finds. Organizations that receive public funding shall be subject to accountability and the respective state control.
Article 409
Soil conservation, especially its fertile layer, is a matter of public interest and national priority. A regulatory framework shall be established for its protection and sustainable use to prevent its degradation, in particular as a result of pollution, desertification, and erosion.
In areas affected by processes of degradation and desertification, the State shall develop and promote forestation, reforestation, and revegetation projects that avoid single-crop farming and preferably use native species adapted to the area.
Article 410
The State shall provide farmers and rural communities with support for soil conservation and restoration, as well as for the development of farming practices that protect and promote food sovereignty.
Article 413
The State shall promote energy efficiency, the development and use of environmentally clean and healthy practices and technologies, as well as diversified and low-impact renewable sources of energy that do not jeopardize food sovereignty, the ecological balance of the ecosystems or the right to water.
Facts of Ecuador's Constitution
Preamble (Part of it)
We women and men, the sovereign people of Ecuador
RECOGNIZING our age-old roots, wrought by women and men from various peoples,
CELEBRATING nature, the Pacha Mama (Mother Earth), of which we are a part and which is vital to our existence,
INVOKING the name of God and recognizing our diverse forms of religion and spirituality,
Article 56
Indigenous communities, peoples and nations, the Afro-Ecuadorian people, the back-country people (montubios) of the inland coastal region, and communes are part of the single and indivisible Ecuadorian State.
Article 171
The authorities of the indigenous communities, peoples, and nations shall perform jurisdictional duties, on the basis of their ancestral traditions and their own system of law, within their own territories, with a guarantee for the participation of, and decision-making by, women. The authorities shall apply their own standards and procedures for the settlement of internal disputes, as long as they are not contrary to the Constitution and human rights enshrined in international instruments.
The State shall guarantee that the decisions of indigenous jurisdiction are observed by public institutions and authorities. These decisions shall be subject to monitoring of their constitutionality. The law shall establish the mechanisms for coordination and cooperation between indigenous jurisdiction and regular jurisdiction.
Article 345 (Part of it)
Education as a public service shall be provided by means of public, mixed public and religious, and private school institutions.
