The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has declined to order Ecuador to protect Mexico\u2019s embassy, following a raid last month on the building in Quito.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mexico had filed the complaint against Ecuador at the United Nations\u2019 top court in the wake of the April 5th raid. Ecuadorian police had stormed the compound, in what many considered to be a clear breach of diplomatic conventions, to arrest former Vice President Jorge Glas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mexico\u2019s complaint said that Ecuador\u2019s actions had violated its sovereignty. It called for Quito to issue an apology or face suspension from the United Nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While a ruling on that complaint is expected to take years, in the short term, Mexico also asked the court to order Ecuador to take \u201cappropriate and immediate steps to provide full protection and security of diplomatic premises\u201d and prevent any further intrusions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But on Thursday, International Court of Justice President Nawaf Salam said that Ecuador had already made pledges that \u201cencompass the concerns expressed by Mexico.\u201d He noted \u201cthe court considers that there is at present no urgency\u201d requiring preliminary orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe court highlighted, among other things, that Ecuador has given repeated assurances that it would provide full protection and security to the premises, property and archives of the Mexican embassy in Quito,\u201d Salam told reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alejandro Celorio Alcantara, legal adviser for Mexico\u2019s Foreign Affairs Ministry, called Ecuador\u2019s pledges a move in the right direction. However, he added: \u201cWe would want to see all of the political actors in Ecuador reassuring that an embassy cannot be violated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is of the utmost importance for Mexico, for Ecuador, for the world entirely recognising that there is no exception to the inviolability,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ICJ case has capped a diplomatic spat that has tanked relations between the two Latin American countries. At the end of April, Ecuador filed a counter-complaint against Mexico at the ICJ. It accused Mexico of interfering in its domestic affairs and of committing a \u201cblatant misuse\u201d of its diplomatic compound to shield Glas from the country\u2019s criminal law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The former vice president, who served under former President Rafael Correa, had been twice convicted on charges related to bribery and the misuse of public funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He had been staying at Mexico\u2019s embassy since around December 17, 2023. At the end of December, a judge ruled that Glas had not met the requirements of parole and ordered his arrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the months progressed, tensions began to ratchet between Mexico and Ecuador, with current Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador drawing comparisons between the presidential campaign season in Mexico and the violence that proceeded Ecuador\u2019s 2023 vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That included questioning whether Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa would have won if the violence \u2013 which included the assassination of candidate Fernando Villavicencio \u2013 had not taken place. Ecuador responded by declaring Mexico\u2019s ambassador persona non grata.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hours before Ecuadorean police scaled the Mexican embassy\u2019s fences on April 5th, Obrador Lopez granted political asylum to Glas. The legal category is granted to individuals fleeing persecution, but critics have accused Lopez Obrador, a left-wing populist, of misusing the status to support political allies across the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since the raid, Glas has been imprisoned in the city of Guayaquil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond Mexico, the storming of the embassy has been broadly condemned across the region for appearing to violate international laws, including the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that establishes embassies and consulates as protected spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Organization of American States (OAS) expressed \u201csolidarity with those who were victims of the inappropriate actions that affected the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador\u201d and called on both countries to resolve the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S. Department of State also said it \u201ctakes very seriously the obligation of host countries under international law to respect the inviolability of diplomatic missions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A three-member Ecuadorian tribunal also declared the raid illegal on April 13, but nevertheless upheld Glas\u2019s imprisonment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has declined to order Ecuador to protect Mexico’s embassy, following a raid last month on the building in Quito. Mexico had filed the complaint… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[42],"class_list":["post-5418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"authors":[{"term_id":42,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"radio-habana-cuba","display_name":"Radio Habana Cuba","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5420,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5418\/revisions\/5420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5418"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=5418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}