An expert panel appointed by the United Nations (UN) has concluded that the Nicaraguan government led by President Daniel Ortega has committed “widespread human rights violations that amount to crimes against humanity”. The panel was set up to investigate alleged human rights violations in Nicaragua since 2018, when the government began cracking down on opponents in response to social unrest – repression which intensified after discredited general elections in November 2021. Other institutions have similarly concluded that such crimes – which are subject to the principle of universal jurisdiction – were committed by Ortega and other top officials. The UN expert panel’s findings have been welcomed by local and international rights groups, which have seized on its calls for the international community to initiate legal action against those responsible.
Set up in May 2022, in line with a March 2022 resolution adopted by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), the three-member panel of human rights experts on Nicaragua (GHREN) issued its report on 2 March for the HRC’s 52nd session taking place from 27 February to 4 April. It was unequivocal that the alleged abuses “include extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions, torture, arbitrary deprivation of nationality and of the right to remain in one’s own country [which are] not an isolated phenomenon but the product of the deliberate dismantling of democratic institutions and destruction of civic and democratic space”.
Warning that “these violations continue to be committed today”, GHREN chair, Germany’s Jan-Michael Simon, said “the scale you’re looking at in terms of executions…is more than 100; if it comes to torture, we would come to several hundred [or] even more, and if it comes to arbitrary detentions, this goes well beyond this number…Given the other violations under political persecution, [it comes to] several thousand.” The report also highlights the closure of at least 3,144 civil society groups since December 2018, noting that “virtually all independent media and human rights organisations operate from abroad”. It warns that the situation is worsening, citing the recent expulsion of 222 opponents dubbed “traitors” by the government, who were then stripped of their nationality – a measure since applied to a further 94 dissidents [WR-23-07].
A New York Times (NYT) article published on 2 March cited Simon as comparing Nicaragua’s track record on human rights to Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, saying the current government’s tactics to hold on to power beginning in 2018 were like those seen during the Nuremberg trials. “The weaponising of the justice system against political opponents in the way that is done in Nicaragua is exactly what the Nazi regime did,” he said. The NYT also points out that under universal jurisdiction any country’s courts can try people for atrocities committed anywhere. Yet while the GHREN recommends exercising this principle, it notes that it applied the “reasonable grounds to believe” standard of proof. It admits that this threshold is “lower than that required to establish liability in a criminal proceeding”, although is clear that it is “sufficient to justify further investigation”.
The GHREN is not the first international panel to reach this conclusion. In December 2018, an Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), presented a report into the violence which erupted between 18 April and 30 May 2018, citing 109 violent deaths over that period, and finding that the “State of Nicaragua perpetrated actions that amount to crimes against humanity, according to international law, namely murders, arbitrary deprivation of liberty and persecution”. An IACHR-endorsed report released in November 2021 by 15 Nicaraguan human rights organisations, including Centro Nicaragüense de Derechos Humanos (Cenidh) and Colectivo de Derechos Humanos Nicaragua Nunca Más, accused President Ortega of these crimes. The report was the first to include the period up to and including the November 2021 election and tallied at least 355 dead and some 2,000 injured by state agents or civilians acting in acquiescence with these forces, since 2018.
According to the GHREN report, the Ortega government officially recognises 198 deaths between 19 April and 13 September 2018 in the context of the protests. The GHREN report notes that it attributes responsibility to the people who participated in the protests, which it characterises as an “attempted coup”.
Ortega’s response
The GHREN report notes that between June and December 2022, it sent 11 letters to the Nicaraguan authorities. However, it received no response. On 6 March the HRC concluded an interactive dialogue with the GHREN which cited the Nicaraguan government as wishing to “formally indicate that it had not nor would it ever accept the unilateral appointment of the Members of the Group of Experts in any way, shape or form”, describing it as “nothing less than a smokescreen in order to allow fabrication of facts”. A 6 March statement by US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) notes that no international human rights monitor has been allowed to visit the country since the government expelled staff members of the IACHR and UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in late 2018.
Cosep shuttered
Indicative of the government’s continued crackdown on civil society, on 6 March Nicaragua’s influential umbrella business group, Consejo Superior de la Empresa Privada (Cosep), was stripped of its legal status. The authorities cited bureaucratic issues and a failure to complete the registration validation process as the grounds for its decision, which also affects another 18 private sector groups, including the national chamber of mining (Caminic) and national chamber of microfinance (Asomif).
Cosep and the government previously had an amicable relationship, due to President Ortega’s business-friendly policies and pragmatic economic management. However, this unravelled following the April 2018 crackdown, and Cosep leaders have since featured among those targeted by the government. Its two most recent presidents, José Adán Aguerri and Michael Healy, were among the 222 political prisoners recently expelled to the US. Both aligned with opposition grouping Alianza Cívica por la Justicia y la Democracia (ACJD), they were detained in 2021, and convicted last year of money laundering and treason – charges widely considered trumped up and invoked against other political prisoners.
Amid condemnation by private sector groups in Central America like sub-regional organisation Federación de Entidades Privadas de Centroamérica, Panamá y República Dominicana (Fedepricap), critics like Félix Maradiaga, a former presidential pre-candidate who was recently expelled, warned that with Cosep’s closure Ortega is “isolating the country even more from investment which could generate jobs and opportunities”.
US Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols also tweeted that the move “further weakens the…fragile business environment” in the country, which has faced significant international sanctions over the worsening human rights and democracy situation – not least those imposed in October by the US targeting the gold sector [WR-22-45].
Concerns about the impact of Cosep’s closure on Nicaragua’s business climate come as a report released in January by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) already highlighted that “business climate deterioration and stricter international sanctions pose elevated risks to trade and financing flows”. That report estimated that Nicaragua’s GDP grew by 4% in 2022, which it expects to moderate to 3% this year.