The Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders (IM-Defensoras) denounced that the Government of Daniel Ortega has already accumulated a total of 57 feminist or women’s rights organizations canceled since 2018, which aggravates the situation of violence suffered by Nicaraguan victims of gender violence.
“We will not tire of reiterating the serious impact that these cancellations have on the rights of Nicaraguan women, leaving them in a situation of greater vulnerability and exposure to violence and the violation of their fundamental rights,” they emphasize in a statement.
Feminists point out that statistics on femicide have increased in recent years, in 2021 alone there were 71 women murdered in Nicaragua. Likewise, there were more than 8,000 women who reported to the national authorities having suffered domestic violence and another 5,000 sexual violence.
IM-Defenders regrets that in Nicaragua “thousands of women work in sweatshops owned by transnational capital under conditions of exploitation and extreme precariousness and where the interruption of pregnancy has been completely penalized since 2006.”
Among the canceled associations and NGOs there are feminist initiatives with decades of work in Nicaragua, which supported and informed women about their human and labor rights. One of them is the Movement of Working and Unemployed Women María Elena Cuadra, which accompanied the women of the maquilas; while other groups provided shelters, information on gender violence in remote areas of the country such as the Association of Caribbean Adolescent and Young Women, canceled on June 2.
NGOs had more than 20 years of work
“We reiterate our call to the international community and feminist solidarity to join these organizations, become aware of the seriousness of the situation experienced by those who defend human rights in Nicaragua and, in particular, those who do so from a feminist perspective and working for women’s rights,” they say.
Of the 284 legal entities that were canceled between May and the first two days of June, 24 were groups, associations and foundations that worked on issues of gender violence, according to an analysis of CONFIDENTIALmade from a database built with the legislative decrees and the resolutions of the Ministry of the Interior (Migob), published in La Gaceta Diario Oficial.
The data also indicates that 58% of these NGOs had between 21 and 30 years of working in Nicaragua; while 29% were between 11 and 20 years old. In other words, in their long history they have helped tens of thousands of women survivors of gender-based violence. Meanwhile, the State has left them unprotected by releasing their aggressors or minimizing their complaints.
Femicides increased since 2018
In the last eight years, at least 513 women have been murdered in Nicaragua, according to monitoring data by Catholics for the Right to Decide, which also reveals an increase in femicides since 2018.
According to the report, that year there were 61 femicides, ten more than in 2017, and by 2021 the balance of women victims of gender violence was 71. This represents an increase of 33%, while the Daniel Ortega regime increased the levels of social and political violence.
In 2022, the monitoring of Católicas indicates that there have been at least 27 femicides, which include the deaths of two adolescents. Most of these died at the hands of their partners and ex-partners.
“The data from the observatory always show us the high levels of impunity, where there is no justice, and there are no in-depth investigations. On the contrary, there are always excuses from the authorities”, expressed the Catholics.
This year, the month with the most femicides in Nicaragua was March, which accumulated a total of eight women murdered. In April there were six more deaths and in May five.
The last publicly known femicide was that of Inés Luna, a 74-year-old woman, who was murdered in her home in Matagalpa. A week after her death, the National Police has failed to clarify the case, there are no detainees or suspects. The only sure thing is that the old woman, who lived alone, was beaten and her throat cut on Tuesday, May 31, and her body was found until the next day when the neighbors knocked on her door and she could no longer open it.
