Ecuador Fails to Comply with Referendum Closing Oil Wells
HAVANA TIMES – Waorani Indigenous people of Ecuador protested on Wednesday, August 20, at the Constitutional Court to denounce the government’s failure to comply with the mandate of a popular referendum ordering the closure of oil wells in Yasuní National Park, located in the northeastern Amazon region of the country.
Juan Bay, president of the Waorani Nationality of Ecuador (Nawe), said, “Two years have already passed, there are 247 wells, and only 10 have been closed.”
On August 20, 2023, in a binding popular referendum, the Ecuadorian people voted—with a majority of 59% of the electorate—in favor of halting oil exploitation in the ITT block (Ishpingo, Tambococha, and Tiputini) of Yasuní National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
The referendum marked the culmination of decades of struggles by Indigenous communities, environmentalists, youth groups, and other organizations to protect the park from oil exploitation.
Yasuní is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, home to more than 2,000 species of trees and shrubs, 204 mammals, 610 birds, as well as reptiles, amphibians, and fish. It also shelters Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation.
The collective Yasunidos released a statement asserting that “far from carrying out the people’s will, the State has invented excuses, procedures, committees, and reports to delay what should have been an immediate action.”
“This inaction is not a mistake: it is a deliberate strategy of institutional disobedience against popular sovereignty,” the group emphasized in the document made public at the doors of the Constitutional Court in the capital.
The Court had set a deadline of August 20, 2024, for the total closure of more than 200 wells. However, reports verified by Human Rights Watch (HRW) indicate that production continues at an average exceeding 44,000 barrels (159 liters) of crude oil per day.
Last year, after United Nations human rights experts urged the government to respect the popular decision and accelerate the closures, the Executive presented a five-year progressive dismantling plan.
Similarly, in September 2024, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that continued operations in the oil block violated the rights of the Tagaeri and Taromenane Indigenous peoples and ordered the State to close the wells by March 2026.
The Committee for the Execution of the People’s Will, “belatedly created by the current government (of President Daniel Noboa, in power since September 2023), has done nothing concrete,” according to Yasunidos’ complaint.
HRW joined the criticism of the government’s decision to extend the dismantling period to five years.
“The government must respect the will of the Ecuadorian people and immediately end oil extraction in the area protected by the referendum,” said Richard Pearshouse, Director of Environment and Human Rights at HRW.
Available reports differ on the number of wells closed since the referendum, but all agree the figure is very low—about 10 in 2024—and the government plans to close another 48 by the end of 2025.
The government has cited the country’s security crisis, and the need for resources to address it, as justification for delaying compliance with the closures ordered by the referendum.
Oil exploitation in the ITT block, as in the rest of the Amazon, will be a key issue at the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization Summit, scheduled for August 22 in Bogotá.