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Nicaragua’s National Assembly, dominated by the ruling party, approved on Wednesday, January 14, 2026, a constitutional reform establishing that Nicaraguans will lose their nationality upon acquiring another, in a measure heavily criticized by the opposition in exile.
“The National Assembly approved in Second Legislature the Partial Reform Law to Articles 23 and 25 of the Nicaraguan Constitution”, the Parliamentary Channel said on its Facebook page.
Article 25 of the Constitution now states that “Nicaraguan nationality will be lost when another nationality is acquired,” and Article 23 that “foreign men and women may be naturalized, after renouncing their nationality of origin.”
This partial constitutional reform was approved on May 16, 2025 in First Legislature, and on Wednesday in Second and definitive Legislature, as the procedure dictates.
The amendment was proposed as urgent by Nicaragua’s co-presidents, the married couple Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, who argued in the explanatory memorandum that “nationality is not an administrative procedure, but a sacred pact of loyalty. Whoever acquires another nationality and swears loyalty to a foreign State breaks the legal and moral bond with Nicaragua. There cannot be double fidelity: the homeland demands exclusive commitment.”
Reform criticized by the opposition in exile
Opposition groups in exile such as the Democratic Renewal Union (Unamos) have condemned the reform that eliminates dual nationality for Nicaraguans, considering it a deepening of the Ortega-Murillo “authoritarian escalation,” which sows “even more uncertainty and lack of protection among the Nicaraguan population, especially those who, in the legitimate exercise of their rights, have acquired another nationality.”
“Nationality is an inherent right of the person, a fundamental link with the homeland that cannot be arbitrarily revoked by an authoritarian regime that seeks to silence dissenting voices and consolidate its power through terror and repression,” Unamos said in a public statement when the reform was first approved.
Hundreds of Nicaraguans have been stripped of their nationality by the Ortega-Murillo government, while others have been denied entry to their country amid a harsh and prolonged crackdown on dissent.
The representative for Central America of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Andres Sanchez Thorin, said in September 2025 that basic and fundamental guarantees of human rights “have been eliminated” in Nicaragua through a series of legal reforms, including a “profound” one to the Constitution.
In mid-February 2025, Nicaragua brought into force a sweeping reform to the Constitution that transforms the State, eliminates the balance of powers, and grants total power to Ortega and Murillo.
A total of 148 of the 198 articles of the Constitution were reformed and another 37 were repealed, including the one that prohibited torture, and the reform established the figure of a “co-president” and legalized declaring a citizen stateless, among other changes.
