UN calls Nicaragua crackdown on NGOs 'deeply alarming'

Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega attends the summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) bloc in Caracas on April 24, 2024. [AFP]

The United Nations on Tuesday said the closing of 1,500 NGOs in Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's latest crackdown on opponents -- the biggest targeting of NGOs to date -- was "deeply alarming".

The move on Monday brought to more than 5,000 the number of organisations, including NGOs, media outlets and private universities, that have now had their legal status cancelled in Nicaragua, most of them since the end of June 2022, the UN human rights office said.

"The decision by the Nicaraguan authorities to ban a further 1,500 civil society organisations, about half of them religious associations, is deeply alarming, all the more so in a country that has seen civic space fundamentally eroded in recent years and undue restrictions on religious freedom," spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell said.

All of the more than 5,000 NGOs' assets are now under government control, she said in a statement.

The Nicaraguan Red Cross and several Catholic charities are among the NGOs shuttered to date, with many hit by charges dismissed as spurious.

"The severe impact of these measures on the rights to freedom of association and expression, as well as freedom of religion, makes the defence of human rights increasingly difficult in Nicaragua," said Throssell.

"Of those civil society organisations still functioning, many have opted for self-censorship or dissolution amid restrictive laws curtailing their activities.

"We once again call on the Nicaraguan authorities to stop imposing severe restrictions on civic and democratic spaces in the country, and to ensure that human rights are respected, in line with Nicaragua's international human rights obligations."

Ortega first became leader of Nicaragua as a junta head in 1979. He was later elected as the country's president in 1985.

Beaten in elections in 1990, he returned to power in 2007 and has since lifted presidential term limits and seized control of all branches of the state.