Noboa says at the UN Security Council that he receives death threats every day

«For my government and for me, personally, there is an outstanding debt since within the same elections we had a presidential candidate who was assassinated. Likewise, in two caravans we had armed attacks and almost every day for the last sixty days, we have had death threats, as well as our ministers and their families,” said Noboa.

Noboa has said that transnational organized crime has caused more deaths than many of the world conflicts of the last twenty years combined, and that “to combat this situation we need a comprehensive approach from the United Nations where the Security Council within its competencies approach in favor of peace.

“Ecuador has been impacted by the wave of transnational organized crime and its links with armed groups” , which seek to “weaken our borders to favor their routes”, he explained.

“This is not a mere concept, historically in Ecuador we have suffered from the impact of non-international armed conflicts that develop outside our country.”

Noboa said that Latin America and other regions of the world have also suffered from the conditions created between organized crime and insurgency. ” This threat generates instability  and has become the basis of border conflicts and regional tensions,” he noted. 

He assured that his Government is working to “reduce violence and make progress a habit.” He added that transnational crime demands a forceful and timely transnational response.

Rotating presidency

For this reason, he noted, one of the priorities of his mandate is to achieve international support and cooperation, “as well as the deployment of all necessary efforts on the border and inside the country to confront all manifestations of violence.”

Noboa’s intervention, announced by surprise on Wednesday in Quito, occurs within the framework of the rotating presidency of the Security Council that Ecuador will occupy during this month of December.

It is not common for heads of state to attend the Security Council, much less to preside over a working session, this being a task entrusted to foreign ministers in cases where a country decides to raise the level of its intervention to the maximum. UN agency.

As head of a session, the president had to read the day’s agenda, give the floor to the different speakers and moderate the speeches.

Photo with Guterres

40 countries have asked to participate in today’s session, in addition to international experts on topics such as drug trafficking, arms trafficking or organized crime, which lasted several hours, in the morning and afternoon of this Thursday.

President Noboa took an institutional photograph in the morning with the Secretary General, António Guterres, and apart from that act and his attendance at the Council, he has no other public activity planned, according to sources close to him told EFE.

After his trip to New York, which is his first officially abroad, Noboa will head to Buenos Aires to attend the inauguration of the elected president of Argentina, Javier Milei, on Sunday.