6 de marzo 2023
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The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo carried out a “Clean-up operation” that eliminated 3243 non-profit organizations, both national and foreign, that ran programs and projects for the most vulnerable populations in Nicaragua, which the State has yet to replace.
February 27 was the International day of Non-Profit Organizations. In Nicaragua, these organisms, which in the past were a “lifeline” for the most vulnerable, are now being persecuted and eliminated.
This “clean-up” consisted of a mass elimination of the legal status and operating records of civil society organizations, which Ortega accused of “laundering money” and financing the alleged coup attempt of 2018.
“Those organizations, called NGOs, have been created to launder money and then distribute it to develop destabilizing terrorist activities,” Ortega said in March 2021, when he initiated the massive shutdown.
The programs and projects developed by these more than 3200 closed organizations were not replaced by the State after their forced closure, confirm members of closed NGOs consulted by CONFIDENCIAL.
The regime appropriated the assets of these organizations and distributed them among the government ministries so that they could install particular projects. This was the case with the “Grace McGregor” Comprehensive Care Center for Operation Smile, which treated children with cleft lip and palate, and has now been turned into a museum. Another example is the building of the feminist organization La Corriente, which is now a “cultural house”.
“There is a clear persecution of the issue of freedom, of rights in general, but in particular the right to freedom of association, and a persecution and criminalization of the work of the organizations,” says activist and researcher, Amaru Ruiz.
CONFIDENCIAL elaborated a database with the administrative resolutions and decrees published by the Ministry of the Interior, which executes the closures, in which the cancellation of 3243 legal personalities and the registration of operation of national and foreign NGOs from November 2018 to February 2023 is made official.
The analysis of this database, classified one by one by area of work, made it possible to learn about the social impact of these organizations. They carried out social, development, health, human rights, education, environmental, transparency and democracy, humanitarian aid, and international cooperation projects, among others. In addition, this analysis reveals the years of experience, the groups benefited, the cooperating foreign countries, and the systematic patterns used by the dictatorship to validate its closures.
“Operation Clean-Up” of NGOs
The first NGO closures began in November 2018. In the last two months of that year, the Ortega-Murillo regime stripped nine organizations of their legal status for allegedly “managing, receiving, channeling and facilitating funds to alter public order and carry out destabilizing acts in the country.”
In 2019 and 2020 there were five closures of NGOs. This included the Municipal Twinning Association which had social projects related to health, education, women's empowerment, and the environment in Camoapa, located in Boaco.
However, it was in 2021 that the dictatorship began the massive closure of non-profit organizations after promoting hate speech against NGOs. As reported by Ortega to the Latin American Financial Action Task Force (Gafilat), there were 1700 organizations in the country considered “high risk for terrorist financing and money laundering”.
This discourse was reinforced by Sandinista deputies who classified the closing of these organizations as “cleaning” and assured that many of them had been inactive for years. “They are organizations on paper. They do not exist in the life of Nicaraguan families and communities,” assured Sandinista deputy Carlos Emilio López.
There were certainly organizations that had closed before 2018, and others were inactive. That is, they did not have projects due to the reduction of development cooperation, but it is important to disprove (that discourse) because more than 50% of the sample shows us that they did have an activity in the country, that they did have development projects,” explains Ruiz, who participated in a case study of a sample of 53 organizations that were closed.
The president of the National Assembly, Gustavo Porras, assured that the closure was a “process of ordering something that was a mess”, of organizations that were not up to date.
However, after the closure of the legal entities, several national and international organizations claimed that Migob refused to receive their documentation and then cancelled and confiscated them.
In order to carry out the massive decapitation of NGOs, the dictatorship reformed Law 115, General Law for the Regulation and Control of Non-Profit Organizations, which gave Migob the power to eliminate their legal status through ministerial resolutions. Before the reform, the National Assembly was the entity in charge of approving the cancellation.
Characterization of organizations
Ninety-six percent of the 3223 NGOs cancelled by the Ortega dictatorship were eliminated in 2022. During the first semester of that year, 796 organizations were closed and in the following six months 2311 more were added.
In the first two months of 2023, 62 more organizations were added. Among them, are two foreign organizations that had between 14 and 28 years of developing projects dedicated to children in the department of Carazo: Libros para Niños and Arms of Love International.
Thirty percent of the organizations eliminated were implementing economic, social, cultural, community, women's rights, water, and sanitation development projects. These included the Las Segovias Leadership Institute Foundation, the OXFAM Intermón Foundation, the Michelangelo Foundation, the María Cavalleri Foundation, and the Children's Association of Working Boys and Girls of Jinotega, among others.
Of the NGOs, 16% were of social nature. These include neighborhood associations, graduate associations, associations for the disabled, ex-combatants, old people's homes, drug and violence prevention, retirees, consumer advocacy, and others.
Likewise, there are at least 320 organizations that were of the evangelical and Catholic religious type. Others were focused on human rights, humanitarian aid, health, university, environment, and culture.
The operating records of each of the cancelled organizations reveal that 1425 (44%) of them had been operating in Nicaragua for between 11 and 20 years; while 41%, equivalent to 1323, were between 21 and 30 years old. The list also included 134 organizations with between 31 and 40 years of work, such as the Women's Collective of Matagalpa, the Catholic University of the Dry Tropics (UCATSE), which passed into the hands of the Government after the cancellation of its legal status, and the Association for the Development of Solentiname.
Vulnerable groups are affected
The massive closure directly affected vulnerable groups. One of these was the women's movement. At least 139 NGOs that provided support to victims of gender violence lost their legal status, according to data analyzed by CONFIDENCIAL.
Among these, the following stand out: Association of Working and Unemployed Women María Elena Cuadra, Association Casa de la Mujer Bocana de Paiwas, Civil Association Grupo Venancia, IPAS, Association of Women of Kukra River, Association Movimiento de Mujeres de Madriz, among other feminist organizations.
The list of closed organizations also includes 108 that had a focus on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, where the poorest population is located and forgotten by the national authorities. Among the associations that had projects in this area of the country are: the Asociación Centro por la Justicia y Derechos Humanos de la Costa Atlántica, Fundación Tunki-Wank, Fundación Egdolina Thomas para la Defensa de los Derechos de los Habitantes de la Costa Caribe de Nicaragua, Asociación Kupia Krakraukra Alnuka Nani, Asociación de Mujeres Indígenas Mayangnas Independientes, among others.
Foreign organizations
The "clean-up operation” of NGOs directly affected 343 organizations of foreign origin. Of these, 41% are from the United States, 13.4% are from Spain, 7% are Italian, 4% are German and are from Costa Rica. The list also includes nine French, and eight from Holland and Canada. There are also organizations from Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Denmark, Belgium, and other countries.
Among the closed organizations are Fabretto Children's Foundation on education issues, Project Chacocente on social development, the International Christian Service for Peace, Partners of the Americas, Water for the World Foundation, Lifelink International, Seeds for Progress Foundation, and the Dutch Development Cooperation Service.
A source linked to the international NGOs that have been outlawed by the Government revealed to CONFIDENCIAL that in October 2020 an evaluation was carried out on the impact of the cooperation channeled by these organizations.
“The evaluation is only partial because only 27 international organizations provided information,” the source specified. “Between these 27 international NGOs, they channeled 25.5 million dollars a year in cooperation with Nicaragua, directly reaching 550,000 people, especially in rural areas,” they added.
New phase of approvals and voluntary closures
After a massive wave of NGO closures in Nicaragua during the year 2022, the regime of Daniel Ortega initiated a process of “re-approval” of the legal status of organizations that remain in the country and that will now be governed under the new legal regime established by Law 1115, approved in March 2022.
In total, Migob has re-approved 35 associations and foundations, almost all of which are sports organizations. The first revalidation took place on December 22, 2022 and concerned the Nicaraguan Federation of Associated Baseball (Feniba).
The validations of NGOs are being published in the Official Gazette, La Gaceta. In addition to reapproving their legal status, the Migob grants them a new perpetual number, which must be used in all their documentation and legal operations.
In parallel to the cancellations of legal status and operating registrations – in the case of foreign NGOs – and the validations, there have been “voluntary dissolutions” of at least six organizations. Among them are the Nicaraguan Mennonite Mission Association, Water for people and the Sincotex Care Foundation.
Concealed in the “reapproval” process is a new way to eliminate the activities of some organizations without making it public, warns Amaru Ruiz, who is a member of Fundación del Río, eliminated in 2018.
“Many of the organizations are not going to comply with the requirements that the law asks of them or they are simply going to hinder or stop it because they don't want to give it (legal status). That implicitly means a closure of operations without the need to publicly cancel the legal status,” says Ruiz.
This article was originally published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our staff.
