The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador took stock of the work of the international organization based in Quito. Photo: Patricio Terán / EL COMERCIO

The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility, María Fernanda Espinosa, said on Wednesday, January 17, 2018, that "there is a great work muscle within Unasur," the Union of South American Nations, and that "the work dynamic continues," despite the absence of a secretary general.

The Government of Ecuador has halted the construction of a wall on the border with Peru that prompted the Peruvian ambassador to that country, Hugo Otero, to be called for consultations, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister María Fernanda Espinosa reported on Thursday (13.07.2017).

The minister, who participated today in Lima in the Meeting of the Andean Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, said that she will discuss the issue in a meeting that she will hold from 3:00 p.m. local time (20:00 GMT) today with her Peruvian counterpart, Ricardo Luna.

"We have requested the meeting, I think it is necessary, important, to reach a definitive agreement on this matter and I also believe that we have had a permanent dialogue on this matter with Foreign Minister Luna," Espinosa told Efe.

La ministra de Defensa, María Fernanda Espinosa, indicó que las FF.AA. monitorean el cumplimiento de la política de equidad de género, puesto que Ecuador es uno de los países que menos mujeres tiene en las diferentes ramas castrenses.

Espinosa, quien el miércoles pasado presidió la presentación del Centro de Estudios Estratégicos de la Defensa, resaltó que “es fundamental, incluso para el fortalecimiento institucional, que más mujeres sean parte de las FF.AA.”.

En 2013 el Ministerio de Defensa expidió la política de género de las Fuerzas Armadas para fortalecer la igualdad de oportunidades de mujeres y hombres en la carrera militar, fomentar el buen vivir para el personal militar e impulsar la coeducación basada en principios de igualdad y no discriminación de género.

The Government of Ecuador signed an agreement with Italy on Tuesday by which the European country will forgive about US$47 million of debt, in exchange for Ecuador not exploiting the oil field of the Yasuni National Park, in defense of its biodiversity and the indigenous communities that inhabit it.

Under the Yasuní-ITT initiative, signed by Ecuador's Coordinating Minister of Heritage, María Fernanda Espinosa, and Italy's Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, Staffan de Mistura, the money forgiven will go to a trust fund to fund environmental projects.

This fund, whose board of directors includes, in addition to the Government of Ecuador, those of Italy and Spain, is committed to renewable energies and social development, especially that of the Amazonian indigenous communities that live in the Yasuni Park, one of the centers with the greatest biological diversity on the planet.

In the verdant underworld of the Amazon rainforest, shielded from the sun’s rays by the electric green foliage of towering kapok trees, many hazards can trap the unwary.

A barely noticeable hole in the moist black soil will, if disturbed, disgorge streams of bullet ants, so named because the pain of their bite is said to feel similar to being shot. Further beneath the shimmering emerald canopy of the Yasuni national park in Ecuador is another, infinitely more dangerous peril. No less than 846m barrels of oil – 20 per cent of the country’s known reserves – lies below this pristine expanse of rainforest, covering almost 1m hectares. Yet Ecuador has taken a decision that no other oil-endowed country has so far considered. It will refrain from developing the reserves beneath Yasuni national park and leave the forest untouched, if the outside world will compensate the country with half the money it would thereby forgo.

Ecuador is trying to salvage its campaign to enlist international sponsors to protect a pristine nature reserve in the Amazon, after an initial drive ended in disarray and doubts about whether President Rafael Correa would leave the park’s oil riches untouched.

Correa recently appointed former Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa to head a new panel to seek donations from Arab and Asian countries for the 2.4-million-acre Yasuni National Park, one of the world’s most biodiverse nature reserves.

Members of a previous panel of environmentalists, as well as Foreign Minister Fander Falconi, resigned last month after Correa publicly berated the Yasuni proposal they had spent two years developing, calling them “infantile environmentalists.” The panel had completed a draft proposal and secured tentative commitments from the governments of Spain, Germany, Belgium and Sweden to contribute $1.7 billion -- about half the amount demanded by Correa.