Ecuador

Ecuador (  / ˈ ɛ k w ə d ɔr /   <span class="Unicode" style="font-family:'ArialUnicodeMS','LucidaSansUnicode';" title="English pronunciation respelling">  e  -kwə-dawr ), officially the Republic of Ecuador (Spanish: República del Ecuador <span class="IPA" style="font-family:'LucidaSansUnicode','ArialUnicodeMS';" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">[reˈpuβlika ðel ekwaˈðor], which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator") is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered byColombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border with Brazil. The country also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) west of the mainland.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">The main spoken language in Ecuador is Spanish (94% of the population). Languages of official use in native communities includeQuichua, Shuar, and 11 other languages. Ecuador has an area of 258,238 km<sup style="line-height:1em;">2  (99,706 sq mi). Its capital city is Quito, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1970s for having the best preserved and least altered historic center in Latin America.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-7" style="line-height:1em;">[7]  The country's largest city is Guayaquil. The historic center of Cuenca, the third largest city in the country in size and economically,<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-8" style="line-height:1em;">[8]  was also declared a World Heritage Site in 1999, for being an outstanding example of a planned inland Spanish style colonial city in the Americas.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-9" style="line-height:1em;">[9]  Ecuador is also home to a great variety of species, many of them endemic, like those of theGalápagos islands. This species diversity makes Ecuador one of the 17 megadiverse countries in the world.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Conservation_International_Site_10-0" style="line-height:1em;">[10]  The new constitution of 2008 is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-11" style="line-height:1em;">[11]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">Ecuador is a presidential republic and became independent in 1830, after having been part of the Spanish colonial empire, and for a much shorter time of the republic of Gran Colombia. It is a medium-income country with an HDI score of 0.720 (2011).