Basic Human Rights Guarantees Are Eliminated in Nicaragua
says the UN report
Report documents 52 cases of arbitrary denial of entry to Nicaragua and 156 expulsions without legal recourse.
HAVANA TIMES – The basic and fundamental guarantees of human rights “have been eliminated” in Nicaragua through a series of legal reforms, including a “profound” reform of the Constitution, stated on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, the Central America representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Andres Sanchez Thorin.
In comments sent to EFE following the presentation in Geneva of a UN Human Rights Office report on Nicaragua, Sanchez noted that this document “describes how, since 2024, reform after reform, including a nearly complete profound constitutional reform in 2025, Nicaragua has undergone a troubling transformation” in which “power has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of the Executive” led by co-presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
“Through these reforms, it has now become easier for any person seen as critical of the government—even their relatives—to become a target of reprisals and to be detained,” said the UN official.
He added that “the official recognition of paramilitary groups or the adoption of ambiguous criminal laws has created a climate of fear and social control that tends to eliminate any space for criticism and dissent.”
As of June 2025, at least 75 people remained imprisoned in Nicaragua for political reasons, and within 12 months at least 16 cases of torture (including sexual violence) and 31 enforced disappearances were documented, according to the UN Human Rights Office report presented Tuesday in Geneva.
According to the report, submitted to the UN Human Rights Council and reviewing Nicaragua’s situation between June 2024 and the same month of 2025, there were also 52 documented cases of arbitrary denial of entry into the country and 156 expulsions without legal recourse.
Sanchez stated that “hundreds of Nicaraguans have been expelled, denationalized, or simply denied re-entry into their own country,” which “has caused family separations, forced exile, and situations of statelessness and lack of documentation.”
The Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua, made up of three jurists, denounced Tuesday, September 23 in Geneva that the Ortega-Murillo government’s repression extends to its critics in exile, and therefore urged other States to hold Nicaragua accountable before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague for this reason.
The documented cases show that at least 452 people suffered statelessness between February 2023 and September 2024, although the experts noted that others were also stripped of their nationality without any legal process.
The OHCHR representative, based in Panama City, also highlighted in his comments to EFE that “civil society in Nicaragua continues to be weakened,” since “since 2018, eight out of ten organizations have been canceled or forced to close, many of them religious, and their assets have been confiscated.”
Added to this is “a reform of the electoral system that seriously endangers political pluralism, and with it, the fundamental right of people to participate in the democratic life of the country.”
Sanchez also indicated that “Nicaragua’s decision not to participate in the Human Rights Council and in the spaces offered by human rights mechanisms is not a positive sign for the promotion and protection of human rights in the country.”
“It is crucial that Nicaragua resume dialogue and cooperation, taking advantage of the ongoing Universal Periodic Review. From our Office, we remain willing to collaborate with Nicaragua and provide technical support to contribute to the country’s progress in human rights,” added Sanchez.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.