The International Institute for Religious Freedom, in partnership with the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Latin America, the Outreach Aid to the Americas and the Line of Freedoms and Pluralism of the Legal Clinic of Public Interest and Human Rights of the University of La Sabana, submitted a joint report to be considered at the 47th session of the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review of Nicaragua.
Based on the outstanding recommendations, this report was submitted to provide new and relevant information on the state of the right to religious freedom and how the Nicaraguan government has restricted it.
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a distinctive process that involves a periodic review of the human rights records of all 193 UN Member States. It provides an opportunity for all States to declare their actions to improve human rights situations in their countries and address challenges to the enjoyment of human rights. During this process, NGOs can submit information to be considered during the review, ensuring that their concerns are included as a basis for the assessment.
Under the current government of Daniel Ortega, in his fifth term, threats against the Church have increased, the materialization of harassment against its leaders, temples and affiliated institutions and organizations, and even against parishioners who support their faith communities, to the extent that they are perceived as opponents.
The level of politically motivated violations of the right to religious freedom has worsened over time, affecting more dimensions of the individual and collective exercise of that right. Given the importance of the guarantee of freedom of expression for the effective respect of religious freedom, the joint report describes how in the context of the human rights crisis in Nicaragua, the criminalization of freedom of expression is one of the main assumptions of the violations of the right to religious freedom.
The report accounts for:
- Arrests: Around 100 detentions or arrests (including house arrests) between 2019 and 2023.
- Forced exile and statelessness: Between 2019 and 2023, about 132 cases of priests, nuns, lay people and pastors who were forced to leave the country have been documented.
- Massive closure of religious organizations: The closure of around 370 religious organizations has been documented, including the cancellation of legal status, civil society organizations linked to social service and charity, media, educational centres and universities, among these last ones, some confiscated by the state.
- Theft and vandalism: 73 cases of vandalism, theft, or desecration of places of worship were documented since 2019.
Most of the data detailed in this report, both from evangelical religious communities and the Catholic Church, are the result of monitoring and documentation work, reports provided by partner organizations and interviews/field research. The cases mentioned are those registered in the Violent Incidents Database and should always be understood as minimum numbers. Much of what happens in the country may never be reported due to the high level of repression.
The submission is available in Spanish here.