The Pro Human Rights Association of Spain communicated this November 24 to Dr. Vilma Núñez, president of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh), which was awarded the 2021 APDHE Human Rights Award in the international category.
The communication sent to Núñez is signed by José Ramón Antón Boix, president of the Association for Human Rights of Spain, who also added that the award will be held on December 10 in Madrid.
“Since its constitution in 1976, the Association for Human Rights of Spain has been awarding awards to prominent defenders for their work in the defense and promotion of human rights in all parts of the world,” is specified in the letter sent to Núñez.
?We are honored to announce that the president of the @cenidh Dr. Vilma @NunezEscorcia has been awarded the international award @apdhe 2021, in recognition of their incessant work in promoting and defending the #DDHH on #Nicaragua. pic.twitter.com/gBATXtaKxk
– Cenidh (@cenidh) November 24, 2021
The first edition of the award was held in 1982 and since then it has recognized and promoted the incessant work of human rights defenders around the world.
A great defender
Vilma Núñez is president of Cenidh, which in December 2018, after social protests calling for Daniel Ortega’s resignation, was stripped of his legal status by the National Assembly controlled by Daniel Ortega.
Subsequently, the Cenidh offices were dismantled in January 2021, in which the Ortega regime ordered the installation of health care homes for women, but a chronicle by CONFIDENTIAL showed that it is not used to provide medical care.
Despite the repression they experienced and with most of the Cenidh staff in exile, Dr. Núñez has remained firm in the defense of human rights in a Nicaragua where repression prevails against opponents of the Daniel Ortega regime.
He has also continued to denounce the arbitrariness committed by the regime against more than 40 political prisoners who were arrested since the end of May 2021, when the regime decided to disqualify seven presidential candidates who showed interest in competing in elections.
The task is not strange for Núñez, since he had already defended political prisoners during the Somoza dictatorship, including Daniel Ortega himself, who had the Cenidh offices dismantled.
During the repression of April 2018 and the months after, Cenidh was one of the organisms which was in charge of documenting the serious human rights violations committed by the regime against civilians who took to the streets to protest.
“We continue to defend human rights firmly and we are working on something that will serve the future, that they will not be able to destroy, because we are fighting against impunity. We seek to lay the foundations to destroy impunity, which is the greatest scourge that has occurred in this country, ”Núñez said in an interview for Esta Semana in December 2020.
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