(New York) – Reforms passed by Ecuador’s National Assembly and signed by President Daniel Noboa severely threaten children’s rights and fail to protect children who are recruited or used by organized crime groups, Human Rights Watch said today.
On June 24, 2025, the National Assembly approved the Public Integrity Law. The law’s stated goals are to eradicate violence and corruption across all public offices, improve public sector efficiency, and ensure that public goods and services meet citizens’ needs. But it includes harmful changes to laws on youth justice that put children’s rights at risk. President Noboa swiftly signed it into law on June 25.
“The National Assembly has pushed through reforms that put the rights of Ecuadorian children at risk,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “If authorities truly want to end the recruitment and use of children by organized crime groups, they should be focusing on protecting children and prosecuting those who recruit them.”
In recent years, Ecuador has seen a sharp surge in violence linked to organized crime, pushing homicide rates to record levels, including homicides of children. It has also led to increased child recruitment and compromised children’s right to a safe learning environment. But the measures in this law would punish children, not protect them from being recruited and subjected to abuse.
The law comes in the same month that President Noboa officially declared preventing and eradicating the recruitment and use of children by non-state actors a national priority. He ordered the creation of an interinstitutional committee tasked with formulating and implementing public policies to achieve this goal.
The law amends provisions of the Child and Adolescent Code to increase sentences for children. While the maximum sentence for a child was 8 years, now children could be sentenced to up to 15 years for crimes committed during what the government calls an “internal armed conflict.” These children, when turning 18, will finish serving their time in “special sections” of adult prisons.
Since January 2024, the government has invoked an “internal armed conflict” to justify loosening human rights protections in its fight against crime. The Constitutional Court has repeatedly ruled that the government’s arguments did not allow the court to verify the existence of the criteria established under international law for the existence of such armed conflict.
The law also prohibits the use of any measures other than incarceration as punishment for children convicted of crimes that carry sentences of over five years. In those cases, it also bans access to prison benefits such as open or semi-open regimes, that allow more flexible measures than strict confinement. The law increases the maximum period of pretrial detention from 90 days to one year for children accused of serious crimes.
These provisions should be amended so that they align with both the constitution and international human rights obligations.
Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the arrest, detention, or imprisonment of a child must be in accordance with the law and even then should be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time. Similarly, under the Ecuadorian Constitution, youth justice should be governed by specialized legislation and institutions. The constitution indicates that children should only be subjected to “socio-educational measures” that are proportional to the infraction committed and that deprivation of liberty may only be used in exceptional circumstances and for as brief a period as possible.
In February, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child urged Ecuador to subject children to detention only as a last resort, for the shortest time necessary, and separate from adults. It also required the country to ensure regular reviews to facilitate release. The Committee also urged authorities to reject any proposals to prosecute children as adults for serious crimes, to promote noncustodial measures such as probation and community service, and to maintain the minimum age of criminal responsibility at 14.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child has said that punitive approaches that disregard children’s rights can have lasting consequences on their development and severely hinder their chances of social reintegration.
The government should also address underlying risk factors exploited by organized crime groups that use and recruit children, including entrenched poverty and loss of income as a result of widespread violence, lack of educational and economic opportunities, and violence and abuses faced by many children. It should take adequate measures to protect schools from violence, attacks or recruitment, without resorting to militarization, and create safe, supportive spaces for extracurricular activities where children can grow, learn, and engage in activities that both protect them, and steer them away, from crime and violence.
“These reforms are both abusive and ineffective. Denying children the chance to heal and reintegrate will only deepen cycles of violence and abuse,” Goebertus said. “Gang leaders will continue recruiting new children if those bearing the brunt of government policies are children themselves.”