Why Youth in Ecuador Are Organizing for Peace

In Ecuador, peace is no longer an abstract political concept. Today, it is a matter of survival.

As violence continues to rise, thousands of young people are growing up surrounded by fear, criminal recruitment, the normalization of weapons, and the constant feeling that institutions arrive too late.

In 2025, Ecuador recorded 9,216 intentional homicides and a homicide rate of 50.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, making it the most violent year in the country’s recent history.

According to the Ecuadorian Observatory of Organized Crime (OECO), the country registered an average of 25 homicides per day in 2025 — equivalent to one victim every hour.

But one of the most alarming figures is another:

children, adolescents, and young people between the ages of 15 and 29 represent 46% of homicide victims nationwide.

And in the case of children and adolescents, 96% of the homicides registered in 2025 were directly linked to criminal violence.

But beyond the statistics, there is something even more dangerous: normalization.

We are getting used to living in fear. Avoiding public spaces. Changing routines for safety. Believing violence is inevitable.

Because when violence becomes normal, societies stop imagining alternatives.

Peace Cannot Be Built Without Youth

For years, young people in Ecuador have often been viewed either as passive victims of violence or through stigmatizing narratives that associate youth — especially those from vulnerable communities — with insecurity and crime.

But United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250 proposes something different: youth are strategic actors in peacebuilding.

Yet Ecuador remains trapped in a model where responses are often reduced to militarization and reaction, while prevention, mental health, education, and social cohesion remain secondary.

There can be no security without human security. There can be no peace where opportunities do not exist.

Why the National YPS Coalition Ecuador Was Born

At Minga, we decided to organize.

Not to create another symbolic youth space. But to build a national articulation capable of advancing prevention before violence becomes irreversible.

Minga launched the National YPS (Youth, Peace and Security) Coalition Ecuador to connect youth-led peacebuilding efforts through two interconnected dimensions:

• preventing violence and criminal recruitment in Ecuador, and
• promoting global peace and non-proliferation as part of youth security.

Our vision is inspired by the Andean principle of Sumak Kawsay — “Good Living” — which understands security not only as control, but as collective wellbeing, dignity, belonging, and community.

In contexts where drug trafficking and violence fracture communities and social trust, rebuilding trust and opportunities is also a form of prevention.

1. Preventing Violence, Recruitment, and Insecurity in Ecuador

In Ecuador, criminal recruitment increasingly targets young people living in contexts marked by exclusion, fear, weak community networks, and lack of opportunities.

That is why our work focuses on prevention before violence becomes normalized.

Creciendo Juntos (“Growing Together”)

Developed by Minga, Creciendo Juntos (“Growing Together”) is a free digital platform designed to impact more than 30,000 people and families across Ecuador through respectful parenting, emotional wellbeing, and violence prevention.

The platform provides differentiated modules for parents, caregivers, and children, including activities, videos, and practical tools focused on:

• mental health,
• emotional management,
• healthy communication,
• and positive family relationships.

We believe respectful parenting is also violence prevention.

Children and adolescents who grow up with emotional support, healthy communication, and strong support systems are less vulnerable to criminal recruitment, violent environments, and the normalization of violence.

Preventing violence also means strengthening families before criminal organizations occupy those emotional and social spaces.

Digital Campaigns: Challenging the Normalization of Violence

Minga also develops digital campaigns that seek to impact more than 500,000 people through social media, youth-centered narratives, and accessible educational content.

The campaigns use humor, everyday situations, and digital storytelling to question behaviors that are often normalized within parenting, education, and youth culture.

Because violence rarely begins with weapons.

It often begins with humiliation, authoritarianism, verbal aggression, and normalized harmful behaviors that later make violence and recruitment cultures easier to accept.

When violence becomes culturally normalized, prevention becomes much harder.

Academia Formadores Juveniles de Paz

Led by Minga, the Academia Formadores Juveniles de Paz (“Youth Peacebuilders Academy”) seeks to impact more than 15,000 people through youth-led training, workshops, and local peacebuilding leadership processes.

The academy trains young people to:

• facilitate workshops,
• transform problems such as violence, criminal recruitment, and the lack of safe spaces into youth-led microprojects,
• use digital tools and artificial intelligence to build solutions,
• and mobilize their communities around prevention and peacebuilding.

Part of the academy’s educational content is adapted from UNLIREC e-learning modules on Youth and Disarmament, Small Arms and Light Weapons, Gun-Free Zones, violence prevention, and peacebuilding, translated into culturally relevant tools and discussions for Ecuadorian youth and communities.

The focus is not only on leadership.

It is on equipping youth to intervene in environments affected by insecurity, fragmentation, recruitment risks, and weak community protection systems.

Kit de Seguridad Juvenil (“Youth Security Toolkit”)

In the middle of Ecuador’s security crisis, we decided to ask a different question:

How do young people continue living without fear?

Through Minga-led youth dialogues and digital participation processes, we co-created the Kit de Seguridad Juvenil (“Youth Security Toolkit”), incorporating the perspectives and experiences of more than 20,000 young people across Ecuador.

The project seeks to impact more than 50,000 people by strengthening prevention, care networks, and community-based responses to insecurity.

The toolkit examines how violence affects:

• mental health,
• mobility,
• relationships,
• participation,
• and perceptions of the future.

Because security cannot depend only on fear and reaction. It also depends on community.

2. Preventing Global Violence: Non-Proliferation and Peacebuilding

Through the National YPS Coalition Ecuador, Minga also recognizes that peace cannot be analyzed only from a local perspective.

Global conflicts directly affect young people’s lives, even when they appear distant.

Si pasa allá, pasa aquí (“If It Happens There, It Happens Here”)

That is why Minga launched Si pasa allá, pasa aquí (“If It Happens There, It Happens Here”), an initiative that seeks to impact more than 10,000 young people through education on nuclear weapons, non-proliferation, conflict prevention, and global peacebuilding.

Through simulations, digital tools, and youth dialogue spaces, the initiative translates what often feels like an abstract geopolitical issue into something tangible for Latin American youth.

The initiative also incorporates educational content adapted from UNLIREC and United Nations disarmament e-learning modules on nuclear non-proliferation, humanitarian approaches to disarmament, youth participation in peacebuilding, and global security, translated into accessible and culturally relevant discussions for Ecuadorian and Latin American youth.

Because nuclear escalation would not affect only countries at war.

It would affect:

• food systems,
• migration,
• economies,
• mental health,
• social stability,
• and the future of millions of young people worldwide.

Researchers from Rutgers University estimated that a nuclear war between the United States and Russia could lead to the deaths of more than 5 billion people due to the collapse of global food systems, climate cooling, and the drastic reduction of worldwide agricultural production.

Non-proliferation is also prevention.

Just as Ecuador must prevent violence before it destroys communities, the world must prevent conflicts before their consequences become irreversible.

Youth, Peace and Security in Ecuador: National Perception Study

Within the National YPS Coalition Ecuador, we are also leading a national research initiative on youth perceptions of insecurity in Ecuador.

The research seeks to understand:

• where young people feel most unsafe,
• how insecurity affects their mental health and opportunities,
• which spaces they have stopped inhabiting because of fear,
• and how youth themselves believe peace can be strengthened in their territories.

The study is being developed through a proportional and representative sample based on:

• approximately 1.9 million adolescents between 12 and 17 years old,
• and 3.4 million youth between 18 and 29 years old in Ecuador.

That represents more than 5 million people whose experiences with insecurity remain largely absent from public decision-making.

Because prevention cannot exist without listening first.

Peace Requires Organization

Peace is not only the absence of violence. It is the presence of dignity, opportunities, mental health, safe spaces, and community.

The National YPS Coalition Ecuador was born from the understanding that violence cannot be addressed only through reaction.

Prevention must also be organized.

And that means strengthening communities, rebuilding trust, creating opportunities, and recognizing youth not as passive recipients of policy, but as actors capable of shaping peace within their own territories.

Not because we have all the answers. But because we understood that no one is going to build peace for us.

And because, even in the middle of fear, we still believe another Ecuador is possible.

One where youth do not merely survive, but can live with dignity.

Young people are not only those who inherit crises. We are also those who can prevent them.

Key References and Sources

• Observatorio Ecuatoriano de Crimen Organizado (OECO)
• Reporte OECO sobre homicidios y violencia criminal en Ecuador
• Nature Food — Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection
• INEC Ecuador — Proyecciones poblacionales
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security
• ICAN — Catastrophic Humanitarian Harm
• UNODA — Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons