GENDER-BASED POLITICAL PERSECUTION IN NICARAGUA: NO SILENCE, NO OBLIVION

This report examines the repression carried out by the State of Nicaragua against the Women’s and Feminist Movement between 2018 and 2025, situating it within a broader historical framework that extends back, at least, to the late 1990s. Far from constituting a circumstantial reaction at the particular juncture of the social uprising of 2018, the violence documented herein forms part of a prolonged process of stigmatization, criminalization, and gradual exclusion of organized women and of anyone who has challenged the patriarchal and authoritarian order consolidated under the Ortega-Murillo regime. 

The central aim of this report is to determine whether the documented patterns of violence and repression establish the existence of persecution on gender grounds, understood as a crime against humanity under international criminal law. To that end, the analysis builds upon a premise already recognized by various international mechanisms: since the social unrest that erupted in April 2018, Nicaragua has been the scene of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population. On this basis, the report focuses its examination on the specific elements that define persecution on gender grounds, particularly the identification of the Women’s and Feminist Movement as a targeted group and the existence of a discriminatory intent based on gender.