Ministry of Interior cancels 1,500 civil society organizations in one package

The dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, through the Ministry of the Interior, on Monday, August 19, eliminated 1,500 non-profit organizations (NPOs / NGOs), the largest number of eliminations in a single ministerial agreement through the official newspaper La Gazeta.

This comes four days after the Ortega Murillo regime announced a new way of working with NGOs, ordering them to form “alliances” with state institutions, which critics say is another step toward total control over the work of civil society organizations in Nicaragua.

Ministerial Agreement No. 38-2024-OSFL indicates that the 1,500 dissolved organizations – most of them religious organizations – did not comply with their obligations, including: not submitting their financial statements according to financial periods ranging from one to 35 years, with detailed details of revenues and expenses, trial balances, details of donations and their boards of directors.

They also allegedly failed to promote transparency policies in managing the funds, leaving the managers who managed them and implemented their projects unknown as to whether this was consistent with their goals and objectives.

These 1,500 cancellations are in addition to the 3,600 other NGOs that have been gradually eliminated since 2018, according to a census of Nicaraguan civil society organizations operating in exile. In the past, the Ortega Murillo regime officially informed international organizations that the country had more than 7,200 NGOs, meaning that there are currently fewer than 2,000 due to these cancellations.

Researcher and environmentalist Amaro Ruiz, who has been keeping a tally of dissolved NGOs since 2018, points out that there are currently only about 2,000 active NGOs left.

678 religious NGOs were abolished.

Among the NGOs that were dissolved were 678 religious associations of the Catholic and Evangelical denominations, including the dissolved Caritas de Granada. The churches of Bethel, Baptist, Rios de Agua Viva and Principe de Paz were among the most well-known.

The rest of the NGOs have different social causes, including civil, educational, sports, horse riding, former resistance, martyrs, army retirees, police associations, and others.

Since 2018, the regime has been annihilating NGOs that were responsible for social work in the country and that had projects in remote areas that the state did not reach. The dictatorial guillotine put an end to organizations dedicated to education, health, gender, the promotion of nonviolence, etc. It was ruthless towards religious associations – especially Catholic ones – that carried out social work in municipalities.