Children and adolescents in Nicaragua continue to be the main target of violence and there are fewer and fewer preventive actions by the State to protect this segment of the population, say voices that work on this issue.
“The discourse that the country is the safest in Central America is a thing of the past,” says Julia, a social activist who, due to persecution, works almost clandestinely in a rural area. For her, it is enough to look at the following numbers to understand her criticism: in 2020 and 2021, 71 femicides were recorded, in 2022, 68, and last year, 73. “That means that violence is a constant,” she warns.
Professor José has been teaching for 22 years in a public school in the morning and in a private school in the afternoon. He says that there is a behavior
“violence” in teenagers. “The reason we see that violence is because they are exposed to a lot of violence as well,” he explains.
For the educator, “the problem is that there is violence at home, in the streets, there is political violence and that keeps these young people under stress.” “A university student kills a child, another subject leaves prison from where he should have been rehabilitated and kills his ex-partner, No. Something is wrong in our society,” he criticizes.
Institutional violence
José and the women’s rights activist agree that Nicaraguans face state violence, which is another expression of violence that the nation suffers. “The country is experiencing a wave of institutionalized violence due to the constant repression against citizens who oppose the regime (Ortega-Murillo). More than 7,000 people have been kidnapped and forced to live in captivity for months and even years, just for thinking differently from those who govern the country. Others have been banished,” Julia recalls.
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She mentions that while this is happening, thousands of lawbreakers, including “failed femicides,” robbers and drug dealers, are released before serving their sentences or are ready to return to society thanks to the regime’s presidential pardons. Once free, these people reoffend, destroy families and steal their property. “People are suffering from this violence,” the activist denounces.
For the educator, there is a “strong family” crisis. “Many dysfunctional families, many homes torn apart by migration, there is a lot of drug use, useless technology and the result is catastrophic. We must pay attention to what is happening to young people, give them opportunities and not harm their future,” he advises.
“The problem,” says the professor, “is that if we do not attack these factors, we are witnessing social decomposition due to the loss of moral and ethical values and the disintegration of the family unit due to the lack of contact between parents and children, and this is aggravated when these parents have had to migrate abroad or go into forced exile,” he explains.
Black figures
According to data from the Catholics for the Right to Decide (CDD) observatory, in Nicaragua, in 2020, 71 femicides were committed, of which 17 were against girls and adolescents between 5 and 17 years of age. “The problem is that these crimes occurred that year and the pattern was repeated the following year and then the following year and so on, without stopping,” said the activist.
No one forgets, for example, what happened in September 2020; the murder of two girls aged 10 and 12 and the rape of one of them in the municipality of Mulukukú, in the northeast of the country. The crime even led to the approval of life imprisonment as a sentence, which previously did not exist in national legislation, but despite this, crimes against girls continue to occur.
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“That justice has not saved them, and in rural areas it is worse,” complains a relative of the mother of those girls. She recalled that the mother of those girls had already reported abuse against one of them and that it went unpunished. “They seem to live condemned to death in order to achieve peace, because justice never comes,” she says.
The 71 deaths that year also left 115 minors orphaned. According to feminist organizations, the figures would be higher if the aggressors had not achieved their objective in 88 cases. “The numbers of femicides are frightening, but we must add the frustrated femicides that leave difficult consequences for the victims and their families,” says the activist.
Suspicious reports of missing girls
Violence against them did not stop in 2021. According to statistics from Catholics for the Right to Decide (CDD), six femicides against girls and adolescents were recorded that year due to the increase in sexist violence in Nicaragua. And in total, the year ended with another 71 women murdered.
Feminist organizations point out that institutions such as the Police have increased their number of officers, but unfortunately have not reduced the statistics of violence, as they always give priority to political persecution.
The Ana Lucila Women’s Network of the North recorded the disappearance of 71 girls and adolescents that year, mainly in the municipalities of León, Chinandega and Somotillo. “There is a problem and it is made visible because it is reported, what we do not see are solutions, there are no effective State policies, a speech is useless, actions are needed,” demanded the activist.
In 2022, feminist organizations count 68 femicides, 57 of which occurred in Nicaragua and 11 abroad. Of the total number of alleged murderers, only 20 have been found guilty, five cases were under investigation, 14 were in judicial proceedings, one judicial process was suspended, one of the aggressors committed suicide and 27 have gone unpunished.
Of the 68 victims, at least three were between one and 12 years old, seven of them between 13 and 17 years old, 32 were between 35 and 59 years old and three were elderly women. The department where the most victims were registered was Managua with 15 cases and in second place was the North Caribbean Autonomous Region with 11, followed by the South Caribbean Autonomous Region.
Nothing changes
Last year, the Observatory of Catholics for the Right to Decide documented 73 cases of murdered Nicaraguan women. The ages of the main group of victims ranged between 18 and 25 years, with the Nicaraguan Caribbean being one of the areas where most cases were recorded, according to the Network of Women Against Violence.
According to the organization’s report, gender violence ended the lives of four minors that year, two aged 15, one aged 13 and one aged 12, a figure that is becoming alarming, they claim.
As of May of this year, Catholics for the Right to Decide reported 28 femicides. The list includes three women murdered abroad. “Violence and its consequences should not be silenced. We must continue to denounce and demand that the State work on protection policies that are realistic; neither talks nor booklets are of any use. The problem of violence is complex and requires the concert of an entire society to end it,” recommends the specialist.
