The Government of Nicaragua, through the Ministry of the Interior, canceled this Wednesday the legal personalities of another 100 NGOs, bringing a total of 3,026 organizations of this type dissolved after the popular protests of April 2018.
The outlawing of these 100 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), 91 national and 9 foreign, was approved by the head of the Interior, María Amelia Coronel, according to the ministerial agreement published in the Official Gazette, La Gaceta.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, the 91 local NGOs have abandoned or failed to comply with their obligations, including the fact that they did not report their boards of directors and financial statements for periods of between 3 and 19 years, as well as information on the identity and origin of all their members and donors.
In the case of the 9 foreign NGOs, including 3 from Spain and 3 from the United States, they were dissolved on the grounds that they had been abandoned and had been in breach of their obligations for between 2 and 21 years.
Of the total number of NGOs outlawed, 2,902 were illegal as of March of this year, according to a report by 18 organizations that recently denounced in a public hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), according to them, “extreme situation in relation to the systematic violation of freedom of association and the right to defend human rights in Nicaragua.”
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Sandinista deputies such as Filiberto Rodríguez have said that the affected NGOs used resources from the donations they received to try to overthrow the Ortega government in the demonstrations that broke out in April 2018.
In April 2018, thousands of Nicaraguans took to the streets to protest controversial social security reforms, which later turned into a demand for Ortega’s resignation as he responded with force.
The protests left at least 355 dead according to the IACHR, although local organizations raise the figure to 684 and the Government recognizes 200.
The Sandinistas have also argued that the banning of these NGOs is part of an ordering process, because not all of the more than 6,000 registered ones were operating.
Nicaragua has been going through a political and social crisis since April 2018, which has worsened after the controversial general elections of November 7, 2021, in which Ortega was re-elected for a fifth term, fourth in a row and second along with his wife, Rosario Murillo. , as vice president, with her main contenders in prison or in exile.
