State abandonment and the social crisis

War doesn't come only through bullets and military operations. It also manifests itself through the deterioration of public services and the restriction of rights. The downsizing of the state, reflected in the merging of ministries during 2025 and the budget cuts of 2026, disproportionately affects those already living in vulnerable conditions.

The public health system faces a severe shortage of medical supplies. Deaths of newborns, infants, and children have been reported, as well as deaths of patients due to lack of access to dialysis treatments. In the education sector, school dropout rates have reached alarming levels, and numerous schools remain abandoned or destroyed.

For many families, especially those with girls and young women, the horizon of possibilities narrows dramatically. They go from imagining a future with education and opportunities to struggling daily to survive. As one community leader points out:

"Before, we dreamed of our daughters studying; now we just want the mafia not to see them, not to recruit them, and not to kill them."

In April 2026, there were mass layoffs of medical and teaching staff. Furthermore, according to the ENEMDU survey, more than 400,000 people lost their full-time employment. This is compounded by the government's decision to impose taxes on basic goods such as bread, milk, and sweeteners. What are Ecuadorians expected to do when they are unemployed, lack adequate access to healthcare and education, and face an ever-increasing cost of living?

This war is racist, classist, and patriarchal. It doesn't affect everyone equally. It hits Afro-descendant neighborhoods, Indigenous territories, and impoverished communities particularly hard. This isn't an accident or an institutional breakdown: it's a form of governance that decides who deserves protection and who can be abandoned, controlled, imprisoned, or killed.

The social and transfeminist response

In the face of violence, militarization and the weakening of democratic guarantees, community, feminist, transfeminist, diversity, peoples and nationalities organizations continue to maintain networks of care, protection and collective survival throughout the country.

In working-class neighborhoods, rural communities, and community organizations, collective care has become a fundamental strategy for confronting violence, fear, and the precariousness of life.

One such experience is the Pluriversal Healing Gathering, driven by a diverse network of organizations, individuals, peoples, and nationalities. Held in the territory of the ancestral community of Tola Chica, in Ilaló, this process understands healing as a collective, territorial, and profoundly political practice that strengthens community ties and organizational capacities in contexts marked by multiple forms of violence.

With the support of the Global Resilience Fund, Purposeful's humanitarian and crisis response fund, which channels resources to feminist girls and young women affected by crises and actively involved in responding to them.

Several initiatives have strengthened documentation and memory processes linked to struggles against extractivism, militarization, and other forms of structural violence. In a context marked by censorship and fear, documentation also becomes a form of resistance, preserving voices that are often left out of official narratives and challenging accounts that criminalize or render invisible organized communities.

This commitment is also reflected in initiatives like Camaleón Medio, an independent media outlet in Cuenca run by young women who practice journalism with a focus on gender and human rights. Their work has helped to bring visibility to mobilizations in defense of water, feminist marches, actions for justice against femicides and forced disappearances, as well as various struggles for human rights and social justice.

In cities deeply affected by violence, such as Guayaquil, the strengthening of community organizations has made it possible to sustain spaces of popular feminism, educational processes for children and youth, solidarity initiatives and mutual support networks.

In territories plagued by precarity and fear, these spaces remain fundamental to preserving hope, strengthening collective organization, and defending life.

It is young feminists, together with their communities, who sustain care networks when institutions fail, document human rights violations when others remain silent, and create spaces for learning, organizing, and resistance.

Their leadership demonstrates that communities are not only victims of the crisis: they are also protagonists of the responses.

Supporting, protecting, and funding the work of young feminists and community organizations is essential to strengthening democracy, social justice, and the collective capacity to imagine and build other possible futures.