Security & Strategic Review - October 2026

Questioned on 9 September about whether the expanding US security partnership with Ecuador poses human rights concerns, amid concerns that fishing vessels may have been targeted in air strikes, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that criminal organisations were “the real human rights violator”. His comments came in the wake of a Washington Post report which stated that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was conducting secretive counternarcotics operations in the Pacific with the support of the governments of Ecuador and El Salvador.