Letter to the editors at Open Democracy

Complaint about article “Nicaraguan government outlaws feminist groups serving vulnerable people”

We the undersigned have worked in Nicaragua and in solidarity with Nicaragua for decades, and wish to complain that this article seriously misrepresents the position of women’s voluntary groups in Nicaragua, which are not “banned” by Daniel Ortega’s government, as the article claims.

Open Democracy must be aware that many countries have legislation aimed at controlling or preventing foreign influence in their internal affairs. The United States has, since 1938, had the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and there is similar legislation in many places, including Canada and Australia. The UK government issued a consultation on legislation which would include a “Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.” Nicaragua has simply introduced laws along similar lines to those in other countries, requiring organisations that receive funding from foreign governments and government-linked bodies to register as “foreign agents,” declare what funds they receive and show how they are used. Your article fails to make this clear.

The article also completely omits the reasons for the new rules. It makes no mention of the extensive funding of Nicaraguan NGOs by the US National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, specifically aimed at promoting anti-government activities that culminated in the violent coup attempt of 2018. Until that time, Nicaragua operated a generally relaxed regime towards NGOs. Many that have since lost their charitable status were directly involved in promoting violent demonstrations.

The article says in the opening paragraph that if an organisation is labelled as a “foreign agent” it is “outlawed” by the government and can no longer operate. This is the opposite of the truth: organizations receiving funds from outside the country must register; once registered, as long as they continue to comply with the rules, they can operate as before. The article fails to ask the organisations quoted why they refuse to comply with normal rules about transparency. Why should foreign-funded NGOs in a developing country not be subject to the same rules that would apply if they were in a European country or in the USA?

The article goes on to seriously misrepresent the situation of women’s health in Nicaragua. It does not, as the article implies, rest on services by voluntary groups. Nicaragua has one of the best public health services in Central America, free to all, which has, for example, reduced maternal mortality from 92.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2006, to 31.6 in 2021, a reduction of 66%. In part this is due to its provision of 180 maternal wait homes, which offer dedicated care to pregnant women. The public health service also provides all types of family planning free of charge in all health centers, including free tubal ligations for women who do not wish to have more children. Of course, there are also many NGOs providing health care, many with foreign funding, and most of these are perfectly happy to register under the new legislation and continue working.

The article also mistakenly implies that public health spending is low. WHO-PAHO statistics show that Nicaragua has more hospital beds per 10,000 population that Guatemala or Honduras and both those countries have more underdeveloped children, more deaths in childbirth and higher general mortality rates. Of the other Central American countries, only Costa Rica spends slightly more than Nicaragua on its public health service (5.5% of GDP compared with Nicaragua’s 5.1%; the three other neighbouring countries are in the range 2.1%-4.5% of GDP).

There are many more criticisms of the article, which sadly continues a pattern in Open Democracy of attacking Nicaragua and its Sandinista government. It is time for Open Democracy and Democracia Abierta to focus, instead, on this government’s amazing achievements on limited resources, not least in the field of women’s health.