"Ecuador: Government Defies Court-Ordered Oil Ban", 16 March 2026

...Ecuador is failing to comply with key provisions of an Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling to protect the Tagaeri and Taromenane Indigenous peoples, Human Rights Watch said today. The groups live in voluntary isolation near oil facilities inside Yasuní National Park.  

On March 14, 2025, the court ordered Ecuador to take measures to protect the Indigenous groups, including by immediately stopping oil operations in an area of Yasuní National Park called Block 43. Ecuador’s government was already obliged to stop oil production in Block 43 based on a 2023 national referendum. Despite a court-ordered deadline of March 2026 to improve protective measures and monitoring, the government has produced few results...

Despite the court order, during 2025 the government allowed oil production from Block 43 to continue and has not provided information on nearby environmental conditions. The government has also failed to meet a September 2025 deadline to establish a court-ordered technical commission to monitor the movements of people living in the area to determine whether a protected zone inside Yasuní National Park should be expanded to protect Tagaeri and Taromenane territory...

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that oil extraction in Block 43—which overlaps with ancestral Indigenous territory—generated environmental pollution and increased the risks of forced contact with the Tagaeri and Taromenane, potentially exposing them to diseases, displacement, food shortage, and conflicts over resources. The court also noted the result of the national referendum on August 20, 2023, ordering the facility’s closure within one year.

It ordered the government to take “all necessary legislative, administrative, and other measures to ensure that this [referendum] is effectively implemented and that oil exploitation in Block 43 is prohibited”...

The government has also not established the commission the court ordered to monitor the movements of the Indigenous groups to recommend expanding the no-go zone’s boundaries...

In February 2026, Human Rights Watch wrote to Petroecuador requesting comments on our finding that oil operations in Block 43 continued after the Inter-American Court's Ruling. At the time of publication, Petroecuador had not replied...