Nicaragua: Impunity Allows Violence Against Women to Continue
At least 69 femicides of Nicaraguan women have been recorded so far in 2025—19 of them abroad—according to La Lupa. A total of 444 women have been killed over the past five years.
HAVANA TIMES – Sara Fernanda Areas Padilla, who for several months suffered physical and psychological abuse from her abuser, was the first Nicaraguan femicide victim of 2025. Erick Ramón Hurtado Urbina fulfilled a promise he had made months earlier: he killed her and then took his own life, highlighting the severity of violence against women.
The physical and psychological violence Hurtado Urbina, 63, inflicted on the 31-year-old woman was documented in the Sixth Specialized District Court on Violence in Managua.
In September 2024—according to court records—Sara Fernanda suffered a prior episode of violence when he grabbed her by the shoulders, pushed her against a wall, and struck her while shouting that he would kill her and then himself. On January 12, 2025, Hurtado Urbina fulfilled his threat, stabbing her multiple times before taking his own life.
Areas Padilla’s murder is one of the 69 femicides—50 in Nicaragua and 19 abroad—recorded by La Lupa, a Nicaraguan media outlet specialized in gender perspective.
“Machista violence is a global phenomenon and crosses borders, just as the vulnerabilities of women who are victims of different forms of violence also cross borders,” said sociologist and feminist María Teresa Blandón.
Blandón spoke alongside journalist and founder of La Lupa, Maryórit Guevara, on a panel for the program Esta Semana, marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Observed every November 25, the day is meant to denounce violence against women and call on states to implement policies for its eradication.
Guevara explained that in Nicaragua there is “a policy that covers up violence against women.” “There is no priority or urgent attention, and violence is often minimized,” she said.
At least 444 Nicaraguan women have been killed inside or outside Nicaragua between 2020 and 2025, according to data from the organization Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir and La Lupa.
Nicaragua, “A Safe Haven” for Femicides
Machista violence remains a serious problem both inside and outside Nicaragua. The Observatorio Voces records femicides of Nicaraguans in Costa Rica, the United States, Spain, and Guatemala.
Belkis Scarleth Molina, 35, was killed on November 16, 2025, in a boarding house where she lived with her two children in San José, Costa Rica. She is the latest recorded case of a Nicaraguan woman murdered abroad this year. The Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) arrested a 48-year-old man, identified only as Burgos Castillo, after he returned to the scene with the murder weapon and his hands covered in blood.
In Costa Rica, according to María Teresa Blandón, the situation of women who migrate and suffer gender-based violence “worsens” because “they do not know the procedures to file a complaint, they lack support networks,” or because their legal status in the country is irregular.
“That increases fear (…) They face violence in a state of extreme isolation, and when femicides occur, the OIJ investigates and, if possible, captures the perpetrators. But another problem is that many of these femicide perpetrators flee to Nicaragua if they are Nicaraguan, and we do not know if there is any necessary cooperation between the OIJ in Costa Rica and the Sandinista police in Nicaragua. In some cases, femicide perpetrators are not captured and find in Nicaragua an appropriate refuge,” said the sociologist and feminist María Teresa Blandón.
In April 2025, Costa Rican Fabián Danilo Mejía Tapia, alias “Bigote,” fled to Nicaragua after murdering Amaly Nicolle Rodríguez Martínez, an 18-year-old Nicaraguan woman, in El Dique, a neighborhood in Taras de Cartago. Mejía Tapia was later captured and handed over to Costa Rican authorities, and he was sentenced to 14 years and 6 months in prison for the murder. The crime occurred when Mejía Tapia shot Amaly Nicolle in the face, ending her life in a brutal and extreme act of violence against women.
Authorities Abroad Fail to Respond to Complaints
Maryórit Guevara emphasized that the irregular migratory status of Nicaraguan migrant and exiled women in the countries where they reside leaves them in a state of vulnerability, making it difficult for them to seek help.
“They face greater obstacles than those encountered in Nicaragua, which are mostly related to the country’s sociopolitical crisis,” said Guevara, who is also president of the Movimiento de Mujeres Migrantes de Extremadura in Spain.
However, when women decide to report abuse, she added, their complaints are often ignored. “Where I work, we provide support to women victims of gender-based violence, and this year we have seen 10 to 14 cases of migrant women who have suffered violence from different nationalities, not just Nicaraguans (…) At least four of them sought help from institutions that exist in this country to address these issues. However, their complaints were not attended to, and unfortunately the cases ended in femicide,” Guevara explained.
In other cases, such as the one that occurred on November 4, 2025, in Zaragoza, where Eugenia Mercedes Guevara Carrión, 49, was killed, neighbors reported prior instances of abuse to local media even though no official complaints had been filed. The Nicaraguan, originally from El Viejo, Chinandega, was stabbed by her partner, the Cuban Abel Martínez, who is now in prison despite having attempted suicide by ingesting ammonia.
Underreporting of cases in Nicaragua
In 2024, according to Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir, 91 femicides were recorded—68 in Nicaragua and 23 abroad. However, in Nicaragua, the Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo regime does not publish official figures on femicides.
Femicides abroad have increased in recent years, coinciding with the growing migration of Nicaraguans due to the country’s sociopolitical crisis.
“There is a lack of deeper understanding of the issue of violence, a lack of awareness of what it really means in the lives of women. And in Nicaragua, there are laws that are not being enforced, but there is also concealment and underreporting (…) In the past, we would do reports at the beginning and end of each year, always keeping an eye on yearbooks from the Institute of Legal Medicine, the Police, and the Supreme Court, but we no longer see those yearbooks,” denounced Maryórit Guevara, director of La Lupa.
In 2012, Nicaragua approved the Comprehensive Law Against Violence Toward Women, known as Law 779, aimed at establishing measures to prevent, sanction, and eradicate gender-based violence in the country. Despite the existence of this law and other related regulations, violence and femicides remain serious problems.
“The issue is not the absence of laws, policies, or action plans. The problem is that they are a façade—there is no accountability, total opacity, and the policies have no public budget (…) Over the past eight years, they have released some pamphlets, but they don’t even dare to name the root causes of the violence suffered by women, girls, and adolescents,” said sociologist María Teresa Blandón.
“Family Coexistence” Policy Poses Danger to Women
Guevara added that under the “family coexistence” policy promoted by Rosario Murillo, rapists, femicide perpetrators, and sexual abusers who have not completed their sentences are being released from prison.
As of October 2025, the regime had increased the total number of common prisoners “pardoned” since 2014 to 60,376.
Bayardo José Morales Osorio, who on June 22, 2025, murdered his former partner Julissa Asunción Montoya Chavarría, 46, and her 15-year-old daughter in Managua, had a history of domestic violence and had served time in prison. However, he was released under the principle of opportunity through a “conditional suspension of criminal prosecution” requested by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
“There is a policy that covers up violence against women and hides behind what Rosario Murillo calls truth—a family coexistence and the care of the home and family as such. I believe that in Nicaragua there is currently no real policy defending women’s rights. Instead, women are used in reports such as those from the World Economic Forum, which talk about the gender gap,” Guevara emphasized.
Blandon stated that “the very silence and opacity of the Ortega-Murillo regime in addressing violence against women and children makes it complicit in this violence” due to the lack of state response.