Nicaragua closes Save the Children in new clampdown on NGOs

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has shut down Save the Children International and 14 other NGOs in a mounting clampdown on rights and religious groups, according to decrees published Wednesday.

Ortega, a 79-year-old ex-guerrilla who toppled a US-backed dictatorship in 1979 and then led the country for a decade, has shown increasingly authoritarian tendencies since returning to power in 2007.

His government has closed more than 5,000 NGOs since 2018 in a crackdown on dissent following major anti-government protests that year which he claimed were an attempted US-backed coup.

Over 300 people were killed in the unrest.

Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, have gone after NGOs and the Catholic Church for what they see as their support for the protests.

The interior ministry claimed that UK-based Save the Children International, which operates in more than 100 countries, requested its own dissolution, along with a dozen other groups.

Save the Children’s Latin America and Caribbean chapter declined to comment on the closure.

The government had already shut down the activities of the Canadian arm of Save the Children in August 2024.

It also expelled three bishops, including the head of Nicaragua’s bishops’ conference, last year.

Ortega was initially praised for championing a moderate line when he regained power in the country of seven million people.

But in recent years he has seized control of all branches of government and cracked down on anyone he sees as a threat to his rule.

Some 450 politicians, businesspeople, journalists, intellectuals, human rights activists and religious figures have been expelled from Nicaragua and stripped of their nationality since February 2023, accused of treason.