Caribbean & Central America - October 2022

In late August, representatives of the Central American integration system (SICA) discussed a proposal put forward by El Salvador’s vice president, Félix Ulloa, which would establish a ‘Central American union’ (UNCA) to replace SICA. The proposal comes as SICA has faced controversy over its decision to name Nicaragua’s Werner Vargas as its secretary general.

On 22 August Ulloa, who in 2020 President Nayib Bukele named as his delegate in charge of integration issues, floated the proposal during a conference on the ‘Future of Central America’ held by SICA. He said the UNCA would oversee economic, political, monetary, fiscal, social, democratic security, and environmental issues. The institutional framework, which would resemble that of the European Union, would include a council – comprising the heads of state of member countries - a parliament (Parlacen), and a court. Ulloa added that the new entity would originally comprise the eight SICA member states (Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and the Dominican Republic).

According to Ulloa, the aim is to produce a final proposal in 2024 and reform the 1991 Protocol of Tegucigalpa which established SICA. He said the new proposal would spearhead the regional transition from “integration to union”, although “constitutional engineering” and “legislative architecture” would be essential. The institutional model of the proposed ‘union’ would mirror the current SICA framework, which has a meeting of presidents, council of ministers, executive committee, general secretariat, as well as a parliament (Parlacen) and court of justice (CCJ) among other institutions. The difference between both models would lie in their powers: according to Ulloa’s proposal, the decisions of the new organs would be binding. The approval and ratification of the constituent treaty by each SICA member state would be necessary to establish the new union.

A controversial appointment

The recent conference on SICA’s future took place after Ulloa received a visit from Vargas on 17 August. The Nicaraguan was appointed to his current post for the period of 2022-2026 on 11 August, having served as the executive director of the SICA from 2014-2020. The post had been vacant for over a year. However, His appointment proved controversial amid more general concerns regarding the dismantling of democratic institutions in Nicaragua which has taken place under President Daniel Ortega: Costa Rica’s President Rodrigo Chaves received a letter dated 25 June from eight of his predecessors dissuading him from supporting Vargas as the preferred candidate. The letter highlighted concerns such as the human rights situation in Nicaragua, most recently expressed on 13 September by the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and bilateral tensions including Nicaragua’s 2010 invasion of Costa Rica and occupation of Isla Calero, as decided by a December 2015 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague.

Migration

Nicaragua-Costa Rica relations, which have historically been strained, are under particular pressure amid the continued rise in Nicaraguans fleeing to Costa Rica. In March 2022, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said that around 3% of Costa Rica’s population is now made up of Nicaraguan refugees and asylum seekers. Doubling in number over the eight months to February 2022, UNHCR estimates that over 150,000 Nicaraguans crossed the southern border, seeking refuge in Costa Rica. Also in March 2022, UNCHR spokesperson Boris Cheshirkov told a press conference that these figures (as of February 2022) confirm more Nicaraguans are currently seeking protection in Costa Rica than all the refugees and asylum seekers combined, during Central America’s civil wars in the 1980s.

• Symbolic implications

In an interview with Nicaraguan investigative media Confidencial, published at the end of June, Costa Rica’s former president Luis Guillermo Solís (2014-2018), one of the signatories of the letter to Chaves, said with regard to Vargas’s appointment that, “ I think that there are more implications symbolically than in practice because SICA is very much in decline and is an institution that for several years has had very little impact on Central American life…but symbolically it is terrible, because it means almost normalising the presence of Nicaragua in SICA” – a position to which he objected given the democracy and human rights related concerns surrounding the Ortega government.