Ortega annuls another 100 national and foreign NGOs

The Nicaraguan Ministry of the Interior (MIGOB) annulled a hundred more non-profit organizations, 88 of them national and 12 foreign. With this recent annulment, the Ortega regime has stripped 2,781 organizations of all sizes of their legal status since the end of December 2018 to date.

The Interior Ministry’s main argument is that the non-profit organizations did not comply with national legislation. It claims that Nicaraguan organizations “did not report for periods from two to 25 years, the board of directors, financial statements according to the fiscal period with detailed breakdowns of income and expenses, and details of donations” including identity information of their members and donors.

Some of the latest annulled organizations were Evangelical, associations, health and development promotion organizations in Nicaragua’s departments.

These are some of the organizations, foundations and national associations closed down: Asociacion Movimiento Juvenil Eres, Asociacion de Desarrollo Comunitario de Somotillo, Asociacion Municipal para el Desarrollo Integral de Diriamba, Asociación de Jóvenes Indígenas del Norte, Fundacion La Esperanzita, Fundacion Nacional de Apoyo a la Familia y la Mujer, among others. See the complete list here.

More Foreign NGOs Annuled

The Ortega regime has also applied the guillotine to foreign organizations. Through an administrative resolution published in the official newspaper La Gazette on Thursday, November 10, the Ministry of the Interior took away the legal status of 12 organizations from Spain, the United States, Holland, Austria, England, Canada, Mexico and Germany.

• Asociación Global Humanitaria, de España
• Asociación de Ayuda a los Niños del Mundo, de España
• Friends of Bradley´s House of Hope (Casa de la Esperanza Amigos de Bradley), de Estados Unidos
• Fundación Inter Eclesiástica para Cooperación al Desarrollo (ICCO), de Holanda
• Pronica Inc, de Estados Unidos
• Hilfswerk, de Austria
• Seed International Fund Trust, de Inglaterra
• Unidos por una Nueva Nicaragua, de Estados Unidos
• Asociación para el Desarrollo de la Infancia y la Mujer, de España
• Asociación Médicos del Mundo, de Canadá
• Asociación Alianza Vida Abundante, de México
• Agro Acción Alemana (Deutsche Welthungerhilfe), de Alemania

With this new group, Daniel Ortega regime has closed 301 organizations from numerous countries in the last 14 months, mainly from the United States.

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The Ministry of the Interior accuses the foreign NGOs of being in “abandonment and to have from two to 26 years of non-compliance with their obligations according to the new laws that regulate them.”

The crusade against organized civil society has led to the closure of NGOs working in the defense of human rights, the environment, women and children’s rights, local and sustainable development, health, education, providing humanitarian aid and attending vulnerable sectors, through works of charity.

Although Ortega’s deputies have noted that most of these NGOs were not in operation when they were closed without right of reply, a study —that analysed a sample of 53 NGOs out of 1,000 annulled—, conducted by the Inter-American Dialogue revealed that the organizations implemented projects for 41 million dollars when they lost their legal status and their operating registration, in the case of international organizations.

The massive closure of NGOs in Nicaragua has affected more than one million Nicaraguans who benefitted from various social programs, the research showed.

This article was originally published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by Havana Times.