Nicaragua, a country widely criticized for human rights abuses and unfair elections under the Sandinista-led regime, abruptly withdrew from the Organization of American States (OAS) on Sunday night.
Foreign Minister Denis Moncada announced the news on April 24 in a surprise press conference from Nicaragua’s capital, Managua. He said the country had withdrawn its permanent representative to the OAS and closed its mission, there. He also announced that all OAS staff in Nicaragua had been expelled and were required to leave, immediately. Moncada said that Nicaragua would no longer be a member of the “of all the deceitful mechanisms of this monstrosity, the so-called Permanent Council, so-called commissions, so-called meetings, so-called Summit of the Americas.”
Nicaragua’s decision came after the OAS General Assembly adopted a resolution last week declaring that Nicaragua’s most recent presidential election, on November 7, was “not free, fair or transparent and have no democratic legitimacy” — appearing to undermine President Daniel Ortega’s claim to the office. Only one member, Nicaragua itself, voted against it.
The election saw Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, re-elected for a fourth term with 76 percent of the vote. Ortega leads the Sandinistas, a revolutionary socialist party that overthrew the U.S.-backed government in 1979. During the Reagan Administration, the U.S. had formed and funded the ‘Contras,’ a domestic militia group to oppose Ortega, which later became the subject of the Iran-Contra Affair.
Shortly after November’s election, observers and foreign leaders, including President Joe Biden, were quick to describe the process “as neither free nor fair,” with over 40 opposition leaders being imprisoned prior to the vote. The U.S. and other OAS member-states have since sanctioned Nicaragua and Ortega following the election, with the Biden Administration announcing a raft of travel bans on Nicaraguan officials and financial sanctions on Tuesday.
Nicaragua in November had stated that it would attempt to leave the organization — a process that takes two-years to complete, but which the country appears to have hastened unilaterally. In March, Nicaragua’s Ambassador to the OAS, Arturo McFields, publicly condemned his government at the OAS Permanent Council, calling it a “dictatorship” where free speech was absent. His credentials were revoked by Nicaragua shortly afterwards.
The OAS, founded in 1948 to facilitate cooperation among Western Hemispheric states, has 34 member-states and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. All nations in the Western Hemisphere are members, except for Cuba — which was controversially excluded from joining during the Cold War in a vote by member-states — and French Guiana, an exclave of France. Venezuela, which had moved to withdraw from the OAS in 2017, is currently represented by a delegate from the Juan Guaido-led National Assembly faction. Venezuela’s disputed President Nicolas Maduro praised Nicaragua’s move as “courageous” and called the body “an instrument of U.S. imperialism.”
For its part, the OAS considers Nicaragua to be a “full member of the organization, and must fulfill all its commitments,” said Secretary-General Luis Almagro.
Separately, Nicaragua has been controversial for human rights abuses of protesters against the Ortega-led regime and a rise in gang violence across the country. These actions have recently prompted large scale migration out of Nicaragua towards the U.S. Per data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, over 50,000 Nicaraguans were apprehended along the Southern Border in 2021 attempting to enter illegally, an increase of over 2000 percent from 2020.