- Home
- About Us
- Issues
- Countries
- Rapid Response Network
- Young Adults
- Get Involved
- Calendar
- Donate
- Blog
You are here
Nicaragua: News & Updates
Nicaragua was ruled by the Somoza dictatorship, backed by the US, for 30 years. After the Sandinista Revolution took control in 1979, the US assembled former Somoza National Guardsmen into a counterrevolutionary force that, for the next decade, terrorized the civilian population in an attempt to weaken popular support for the Sandinistas. The “contra war” left 30,000 people dead and forced more than 100,000 to seek refuge in the US.
Learn more here.
News Article
September 24, 2018
news coverage of the crisis in Nicaragua has sought to simplify a complex reality. The prevailing coverage lays the blame for the conflict on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and presents a politically narrow and historically shallow context. As a result, the message implicit and sometimes explicit in the coverage—that Ortega is the villain and his departure from office would end the conflict or solve the problems
underlying the crisis—is distorted and misleading.
RRN Letter
September 23, 2018
Criminalization of student leaders and activists in Nicaragua
News Article
September 7, 2018
It’s what happened to Jews in Germany in 1938 when their passports were declared invalid.
News Article
July 5, 2018
Since the May 17-21 working visit to Nicaragua, the IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) has adopted nine resolutions requesting precautionary measures to protect the lives and personal integrity of 64 people on various issues, including their families. Among the beneficiaries are student leaders, human rights defenders, journalists, relatives of victims, survivors of violence, priests, and persons who have provided assistance to injured people.
RRN Letter
April 30, 2018
In the last two weeks of April, more than two dozen people have been killed, many more injured, and many more detained; there are also reports of disappearances. Repression against students and journalists has been particularly strong. Ángel Eduardo Gahona, the director of the local, independent television program El Meridiano in Bluefields, was fatally shot in the head on April 21.
News Article
February 28, 2018
The US has been party to the favorable opinions given by all the main international bodies on the way Nicaragua uses the finance that is provided, with no suggestions of money being diverted for other uses or used corruptly. Its action [passage of the NICA Act] will therefore be seen as hypocritical, and contrary to the evidence gathered by bodies of which it is an influential member.
News Article
February 28, 2018
Nicaragua's achievements in education, healthcare, energy, and lowering poverty can be seen in contrast to the ‘northern triangle’ countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Nicaragua produces only a very small proportion of the thousands of undocumented migrants who travel north to Mexico and the US.
RRN Letter
October 22, 2017
assassination of community judge and defender of indigenous territories Celedonia Zalazar Point and her husband, Tito José González Bendles, at their home in the Tungla community in the Prinzu Awala territory of Prinzapolka municipality of the Autonomous Region of the Northern Atlantic (RAAN) on the Caribbean Coast
News Article
September 14, 2017
As threats to the environment increase across Latin America, new laws and police practices take aim against the front line activists defending their land and resources
Event
August 11, 2017
Enjoy Live Music. Poetry. Refreshments (Fair Trade of course).
Hear updates from IRTF staff who have recently traveled to Colombia, Honduras, and Nicaragua.