The Potential and Challenges of Ecuador

The Constitution of the Republic recognizes the rights to gender equality, to a life free of violence, and to sexual and reproductive rights.
Ecuador has a population of 17,510,643 inhabitants. 51 % are women and 49 % are men, 64 % live in urban areas and 36 % in rural areas.
Ecuador's demographic is young, 38 % are under 20 years of age and 11 % are over 60 years of age. Life expectancy is currently 80 years for women and 74.5 years for men.
It is a multiethnic and multicultural country where 71.9 % of the population self-identifies as mestizo, 7.4 % as montubia, 7.2 % as Afro-Ecuadorian, 7 % as indigenous, 6.1 % as white, and 0.4 % as other ethnic groups.
There are 472 213 people with disabilities in Ecuador.

In 2020, there were recorded 191 maternal deaths, which represents a maternal mortality ratio of 57.6 per 100,000 live births. An increase by 20.6 points compared to 2019.
The contraceptive prevalence rate for women between the ages of 15 to 49 is 92,5%. A total of 92.2% use modern contraceptive methods and 7.8% use traditional methods.
In Ecuador 2 of every 3 pregnancies are not planned.
For every dollar invested in sexual and reproductive health, $17 would be saved (MSP, SENPLADES, UNFPA, 2018).
Ecuador continues to focus on the need to guarantee the assured availability of modern contraceptive methods, which in the period of 2008-2019 represented an procurement investment of more than $40 million.

65 out of every 100 women in Ecuador have experienced some type of violence in their lifetime.
Afro-Ecuadorian women have a higher chance of experiencing violence (71.8 %), followed by mestizo women (65.1 %) and indigenous women (64 %).
In 2020, 78 cases of femicide were registered, while between January and July 2021, 41 cases of femicide were registered (INEC, Special Commission for Statistics on Security, Justice, Crime and Transparency).

The Population and Housing Census is the country's main source of demographic information.
Census results are essential for good governance, public policy formulation, development planning and emergency response.
The last Population and Housing Census was conducted in 2010.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the census has been postponed until 2022.

Ecuador has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Latin America. The rate of births to mothers between 15 and 19 years of age is 63.49 per 1000 women in this age group, compared to a rate of 61 for Latin America and the Caribbean.
In 2019, on average, 5 girls aged 10-14 years and 137 adolescents aged 15-18 years gave birth every day (INEC, 2019).

As of December 2020, 417,000 Venezuelans (48% in an irregular situation) and 55,290 refugees, mostly Colombians (98%), were estimated to be in Ecuador.