The United Nations Human Rights Council should extend the mandate of the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua for an additional two years, Human Rights Watch said today. This renewal is crucial as the government of co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo intensifies its repression.
The UN Human Rights Council established the group of experts in March 2022 with an initial one-year mandate to investigate human rights violations committed in Nicaragua since 2018. The mandate was extended for two additional years in April 2023. The group of experts has documented widespread human rights violations including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence, arbitrary deprivation of nationality, and forced deportation. The experts have reported that there are "reasonable grounds" to believe that these findings "constitute evidence of crimes against humanity."
"Sustained international scrutiny of Nicaragua, one of the region's most oppressive regimes, remains crucial," said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "As the government denies any accountability for rights violations within Nicaragua, the Group of Human Rights Experts serves as an essential mechanism to document violations and facilitate other avenues for accountability."
In its latest report, published in February 2025, the group of experts found new evidence that the Nicaraguan army participated in a violent 2018 crackdown on protesters in coordination with the police and pro-government armed groups. That violent suppression of protesters left 355 people dead and hundreds injured.
The group of experts also urged other countries to pursue accountability measures at the International Court of Justice for violations by Nicaragua of the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and to expand sanctions against individuals, institutions, and entities identified in the experts' reports.
Fifty-two political prisoners remain behind bars in Nicaragua, according to the Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners, a coalition of Nicaraguan human rights organizations documenting arbitrary arrests. Nicaraguan authorities have also stripped the citizenship of 546 people, leaving many stateless.
The government has also closed over 5,600 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), approximately 80 percent of all NGOs that operated in Nicaragua in 2018. According to the Nicaraguan Platform of NGO Networks, the government has also reportedly shut down at least 29 universities and 58 media outlets.
In January 2025, the National Assembly approved a constitutional overhaul that places the legislature, judiciary, and electoral bodies under the "coordination" of the co-presidency of Ortega and Murillo.
The overhaul is set to provide even more domestic legal cover to the government's systematic human rights violations, including by allowing authorities to strip alleged "traitors" of their Nicaraguan nationality.
In February, the Nicaraguan government announced its decision to disengage from the UN Human Rights Council, and withdraw from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). This decision came shortly after the group of experts released its latest report and just as the ILO was set to establish a Commission of Inquiry-the organization's highest-level investigative mechanism-to examine alleged violations of the rights of workers in Nicaragua.
"As the Nicaraguan government seeks to avoid international scrutiny, the Human Rights Council should reinforce its mandate to put a spotlight on violations in the country," Goebertus said.
