The Ortega-Murillo dictatorship has so far dismantled 5,200 Non-Governmental Organizations of the 7,227 registered until 2018 in the Ministry of the Interior, leaving around 2,000 organizations active in the country, which represents the elimination of 72 percent of non-profit organizations.
As of March 2023, the Fundación del Río reported that the elimination of these organizations had left 23,483 workers unemployed, with losses exceeding 250 million dollars and some 3.5 million Nicaraguans, beneficiaries of the projects promoted by these organizations, homeless. These numbers have probably doubled with this new blow to the associations.
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Most NGOs were religious and charitable, including eight of the social action entities of the Catholic Church. The most recent to be closed by the regime are Caritas of Matagalpa and Granada. Caritas of Nicaragua and Caritas León were voluntarily dissolved, citing lack of funds.
Another NGO whose closure had a social impact in Nicaragua was Operación Sonrisa, the NGO had been operating in the country since 1994 and had benefited some 2,200 people with cleft palate surgery in its facilities and 5,738 patients with surgeries, in collaboration with public hospitals.
The pro-government deputies, with the full support of the parliamentarians of the National Assembly, unanimously approved the reforms, additions and repeals to modify the laws with which the dictatorship will now use the resources obtained by the Non-Profit Organizations (OSFL) through forced “alliances” with state institutions with which they will have to share the projects.
Ortega’s political operators in the National Assembly approved reforms and additions to the General Law for the Regulation and Control of Non-Profit Organizations, and to the Law for the Regulation of Foreign Agents, as well as reforms and repeal of articles in the Tax Agreement Law.
As always happens with the legislative initiatives that Ortega sends to the legislature, the approval of the reforms was put to a vote without further discussion, thus fulfilling the dictator’s will.
Basically, what the Ortega-Murillo regime has achieved with the reforms to the three laws that regulate the operation of NGOs is that non-profit or civil society entities cease to be independent and become a kind of parastatal agencies.
Related news: Nicaraguan dictatorship decapitates 1,500 NGOs with a single blow
Since the reforms came into effect, NGOs are obliged to notify the dictatorship’s Ministry of the Interior of the funds obtained and must also include institutions of the regime in the execution of these projects.
“When donations, funds or material goods of any kind are destined for public goods, products and services provided by the State to the population, the Foreign Agent must submit to the Ministry of the Interior the corresponding Alliance request for validation,” states the reformed legislation.
The UN on Tuesday described as “deeply alarming” the closure of 1,500 NGOs in Nicaragua, most of them religious, in the largest dissolution of social entities ordered by the government of President Daniel Ortega since the 2018 protests.
This is a “deeply alarming” decision, even more so in a country that has seen civic space severely eroded in recent years and undue restrictions on religious freedom,” the spokesman for the United Nations Office for Human Rights. Humans, Liz Throssell.
“The serious impact of these measures on the rights to freedom of association and expression, as well as on religious freedom, makes the defence of human rights in Nicaragua increasingly difficult,” he said.
