Ecuador Map

• The Ecuadorian Constitution requires that all children attend school until they achieve a "basic level of education," which is estimated at nine school years. In 1996, the net primary enrollment rate was 96.9 percent, and 71.8 percent of children stayed in school until the fifth grade. The cost of primary and secondary education is borne by the government, but families often face significant additional expenses such as fees and transportation costs.

• Provision of public schools falls far below the levels needed, and class sizes are often very large, and families of limited means often find it necessary to pay for education. In rural areas, only 10% of the children go on to high school. The Ministry of Education states that the mean number of years completed is 6.7.

• Ecuador has 61 universities, many of which still confer terminal degrees according to the traditional Spanish education system, honoring a long tradition of having some of the oldest universities in the Americas: University of San Fulgencio founded in 1586 by the Augustines, San Gregorio Magno University founded in 1651 by the Jesuits, and University of Santo Tomas of Aquino, founded in 1681 by the Dominican order.

• Among the traditional conferred terminal degrees can be noted the Doctorate for medicine and law schools; Engineer, Physicist, Chemist, or Mathematician for polytechnic or technology institutes. These terminal degrees, as in the case of the Ph.D. in other countries, were the main requirement for an individual to be accepted in academia as a professor or researcher. In the professional realm, a terminal degree granted by an accredited institution provided automatically a professional license to the individual.

• However, in 2004 the National Council of Higher Education (CONESUP), started the reorganization of all the degree grating schemes of the accredited universities in order to pair them with foreign counterparts. The new structure of some careers caused the dropping of subjects, credits or even the name of the previously conferred diplomas. The terminal degree in law, previously known as J.D. Juris Doctor (Doctor en Jurisprudencia) was replaced by the one of attorney (Abogado) with the exception of the modification of the number of credits to equate it to an undergraduate degree. In the same fashion for Med School, the required time of education was considerably reduced from 9 years (the minimum needed to obtain the title of M.D. Doctor in Medicine and Surgery) to almost five, with the provision that the diploma is not terminal anymore and it is given with the title of Medic (Medico). Therefore, an M.D. or Ph.D. in medicine is only to be obtained overseas until the universities adjust themselves to granting schemes and curriculum as in foreign counterparts. Nonetheless, a "medico" can start a career as family practitioner or general medicine physician.

• This new reorganization, although very ambitious, lacked the proper path to the homologation of diplomas for highly educated professionals graduated in the country or even for the ones graduated in foreign institutions. One of the points of conflict was the imposition of obtaining foreign degrees to current academicians. As today, a master degree is as a requirement to keep an academic position and at least a foreign Ph.D. to attain or retain the status of Rector (President of a university) or Decano (Dean). For Ecuadorian researchers and many academicians trained in the country, these regulations sounded illogical, disappointing, and unlawful since it appeared a question of a title name conflict rather than specialization or science advancement.

• A debate to modify this and other reforms, specially the one which granted control of the Higher Education System by the government, was practically passed with consensus by the multi-partisan National Assembly on August 4, 2010 but vetoed by the president Rafael Correa, who wanted to keep the law strictly as it was originally redacted by his political party and SENPLADES (National Secretary of Planning and Development). Due to this change, there are many highly educated professionals and academicians under the old structure but estimated that only 87% of the faculty in public universities have already obtained a master's degree and fewer than 5% have Ph.D. (although many of them have already Ecuadorian granted Doctorate degrees).

• About 300 institutes of higher education offer two to three years of post-secondary vocational or technical training.

• The Ecuadorian Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas del Ecuador), consisting of the Army, Air Force and Navy, have responsibility for the preservation of the integrity and national sovereignty of the national territory.

• The military tradition starts in the Gran Colombia, where a sizeable army was stationed in Ecuador due to border disputes with Peru, which claimed territories under its political control when it was a Spanish vicerroyalty. Once the Gran Colombia was dissolved after the death of Simon Bolivar in 1830, Ecuador inherited the same border disputes and had the need of creating its own professional military force. So influential was the military in Ecuador in the early republican period, that its first decade was under the control of Gral. Juan Jose Flores, first president of Ecuador of Venezuelan origin. The Gral. Jose Ma. Urbina and Gral. Robles are examples of military figures who became president of the country in the early republican period.

• Due to the continuous border disputes with Peru, finally settled in the early 2000s, and due to the ongoing problem with the Colombian guerrilla insurgency infiltrating Amazonian provinces, the Ecuadorian Armed Forces has gone through a series of changes as an essential part of the country's existence. In 2009, the new administration at the Defense Ministry launched a deep restructuring within the forces, increasing spending budget to $1,691,776,803, an increase of 25%. (FY08)

• The icons of the Ecuadorian military forces are the Marshall Antonio Jose de Sucre and Gral. Eloy Alfaro. The Military Academy "Gral. Eloy Alfaro" (c. 1838) graduates the army officers and is located in Quito. The Ecuadorian Navy Academy (c. 1837) located in Salinas graduates the navy officers, and the Air Academy "Cosme Rennella" (c.1920) located in Guayaquil, graduates the air force officers. Other training academies for different military specialties are found across the country.

• The coast-based Liberal Revolution of 1895 under Eloy Alfaro reduced the power of the clergy and the conservative land owners of the highlands, and this liberal wing retained power until the military "Julian Revolution" of 1925. The 1930s and 1940s were marked by instability and emergence of populist politicians, such as five-time President José María Velasco Ibarra.

• Control over territory in the Amazon basin led to a long-lasting dispute between Ecuador and Peru. In 1941, amid fast-growing tensions between the two countries, war broke out. Peru claimed that Ecuador's military presence in Peruvian-claimed territory was an invasion; Ecuador, for its part, claimed that Peru had invaded Ecuador. In July 1941, troops were mobilized in both countries. Peru had an army of 11,681 troops who faced a poorly supplied and inadequately armed Ecuadorian force of 2,300, of which only 1,300 were deployed in the southern provinces. Hostilities erupted on July 5, 1941, when Peruvian forces crossed the Zarumilla river at several locations, testing the strength and resolve of the Ecuadorian border troops. Finally, on July 23, 1941, the Peruvians launched a major invasion, crossing the Zarumilla river in force and advancing into the Ecuadorian province of El Oro.

• During the course of the war, Peru gained control over part of the disputed territory and some parts of the province of El Oro, and some parts of the province of Loja, demanding that the Ecuadorian government give up its territorial claims. The Peruvian Navy blocked the port of Guayaquil, almost cutting all supplies to the Ecuadorian troops. After a few weeks of war and under pressure by the United States and several Latin American nations, all fighting came to a stop. Ecuador and Peru came to an accord formalized in the Rio Protocol, signed on January 29, 1942, in favor of hemispheric unity against the Axis Powers in World War II favoring Peru with the territory they occupied at the time the war came to an end.

• Recession and popular unrest led to a return to populist politics and domestic military interventions in the 1960s, while foreign companies developed oil resources in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In 1972, construction of the Andean pipeline was completed. The pipeline brought oil from the east side of the Andes to the coast, making Ecuador South America's second largest oil exporter. The pipeline in southern Ecuador did nothing, however, to resolve tensions between Ecuador and Peru.

• The Rio Protocol failed to precisely resolve the border along a small river in the remote Cordillera del Cóndor region in southern Ecuador. This caused a long-simmering dispute between Ecuador and Peru, which ultimately led to fighting between the two countries; first a border skirmish in January–February 1981 known as the Paquisha Incident, and ultimately full-scale warfare in January 1995 where the Ecuadorian military shot down Peruvian aircraft and helicopters and Peruvian infantry marched into southern Ecuador. Each country blamed the other for the onset of hostilities, known as the Cenepa War. Sixto Durán Ballén, the Ecuadorian president, famously declared that he would not give up a single centimeter of Ecuador. Popular sentiment in Ecuador became strongly nationalistic against Peru: graffiti could be seen on the walls of Quito referring to Peru as the "Cain de Latinoamérica," a reference to the murder of Abel by his brother Cain in the Book of Genesis.

• Ecuador and Peru reached a tentative peace agreement in October 1998, which ended hostilities, and the Guarantors of the Rio Protocol ruled that the border of the undelineated zone was set the line of the Cordillera del Cóndor. While Ecuador had to give up its decades-old territorial claims to the eastern slopes of the Cordillera, as well as to the entire western area of Cenepa headwaters, Peru was compelled to give to Ecuador, in perpetual lease but without sovereignty, one square kilometre of its territory, in the area where the Ecuadorian base of Tiwinza — focal point of the war — had been located within Peruvian soil and which the Ecuadorian Army held as their strong hold all the time during the conflict. The final border demarcation came into effect on May 13, 1999.

• Ecuador is governed by a democratically elected President, for a four year term. The current president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, exercises his power from the presidential Palacio de Carondelet in Quito. The current constitution was written by the Ecuadorian Constituent Assembly elected in 2007, and was approved by referendum in 2008.

• The executive branch includes 25 ministries. Provincial governors and councilors (mayors, aldermen, and parish boards) are directly elected. The National Assembly of Ecuador meets throughout the year except for recesses in July and December. There are thirteen permanent committees. Justices of the National Court are appointed by the Council of Social Participation, for nine year terms.

• Ecuador has often placed great emphasis on multilateral approaches to international issues. Ecuador is a member of the United Nations (and most of its specialized agencies) and a member of many regional groups, including the Rio Group, the Latin American Economic System, the Latin American Energy Organization, the Latin American Integration Association, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, the Andean Community of Nations and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).