The Committee on Enforced Disappearances of the United Nations (UN) reaffirmed and expanded this Thursday, November 13, the precautionary measures in favor of the families of four Ecuadorian minors, a case that shocked the country after their capture by a military patrol in December 2024 and subsequent murder.
The UN body emphasized the urgency of these actions to protect the relatives of Josué Didier and Ismael Eduardo Arroyo Bustos, Steven Gerald Medina Lajones and Nehemías Saúl Arboleda Portocarrero, while the judicial process is underway.
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The official statement of the UN Committee is explicit in pointing out the responsibilities of the State, which include “Guaranteeing psychosocial support and an adequate number of security teams to ensure continuous accompaniment during all activities related to the judicial process or any situation that may put them at risk.”
This provision underscores the vulnerability of family members in the context of a trial of 17 military personnel allegedly involved in the crime.
Precautionary measures have a stipulated period for compliance. According to the international organization’s provision, the Ecuadorian State must adopt the necessary actions and submit a detailed compliance report before February 16, 2026.
The charred bodies of the four minors were found weeks after their disappearance in a mangrove area, near the base where the soldiers now on trial belonged, stoking popular outrage.
The Committee’s protection also extends to the human rights defenders who bring the case. Precautionary measures were ordered in favor of Billy Navarrete, director of the Human Rights Committee of Guayaquil, and lawyers Fernando Bastias and Abraham Antonio Aguirre.
This seeks to ensure their life and personal integrity and allow them to continue with the representation of the so-called “Children of the Malvinas” in the investigation, whose sector of residence gives them their name.
Attorney Bastias stated that the expansion of the measures is a response to the context of “closure of civic space and the persecution that the government of President Daniel Noboa has been carrying out against human rights organizations.” According to the lawyer, the case does not close with the discovery of the bodies, but with the “truth”, so these urgent actions are maintained to guarantee the comprehensive clarification of the forced disappearance and death of the children.
In addition to protecting people, the UN agency ordered specific actions to safeguard the evidence of the case, requiring the State to ensure precautionary measures to “protect all the evidence related to the case, including the electronic devices, vehicles, logs and information from surveillance cameras that were collected,” fundamental elements for the investigation that already reveals indications of beatings and kicks by the military to minors before they were killed.
