The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, through the National Assembly and the Ministry of the Interior (Migob), canceled 200 Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) on August 24, bringing to 1,606 NGOs outlawed in the so far in 2022. In total, they have canceled 1680 organizations, since the end of 2018.
The National Assembly and the Migob each outlawed 100 organizations, including associations of radio communicators, defenders of women, peasants, aid to the poor, producers, community, health, education, and environmental.
In Parliament, the closure of the NGOs was requested —as on previous occasions— by Sandinista deputy Filiberto Rodríguez, president of the Peace and Governance Commission, who accuses the organizations of not registering as foreign agents and failing to comply with the General Law. Regulation and Control of Non-Profit Organizations or Law 1115, approved last March.
Rodríguez has also argued in plenary that the affected NGOs used resources from the donations they received to try to overthrow Ortega in the demonstrations that broke out in April 2018, although he has not presented evidence.
The ban was approved urgently and without debate by the 75 Sandinista deputies and their allies. Another 16 legislators, of the 91 that make up Parliament, abstained from voting.
So far this year, Sandinista lawmakers and their allies have outlawed 1,506 NGOs and a total of 1,580 since December 2018.
The new list of affected NGOs includes the Foundation for Peace, the Nicaraguan Resistance Association, the Action Support Foundation for Municipalities, the Justice and Human Rights Association, the Nicaraguan Association of the Blind “Without Borders”, the “Carlos Martínez Rivas” Cultural Foundation. , Nicaraguan Association for the Support of the Disabled and Youth Association Against Drugs.
The first of Migob
In the case of the Interior, these were the first NGOs cancelled, after the National Assembly approved, at the beginning of the month, a reform to Law 1115, with which it granted Migob the power to authorize or cancel legal entities through ministerial agreements, without the need to go through Parliament.
The Migob published this August 24 a ministerial agreement in the Official Gazette, in which it canceled the legal status of 100 NGOs, which supposedly “did not report for more than 5 to 27 years, boards of directors, finding themselves headless.”
