It was early, maybe around 6:40 am on June 12. Álvaro doesn’t remember the exact time, but he vividly recalls the anxiety he felt upon learning that his school had been closed down by the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. His WhatsApp was flooded with messages from his classmates. In the group chats, they were all sharing the same news: the Hedwig and Robert Samuel Foundation could no longer continue operating due to “inconsistencies in their financial statements that hadn’t been clarified.”
The Ministry of the Interior (MINT) not only ordered the dissolution of the NGO but also the confiscation of its assets and the freezing of its bank accounts. The young man read the messages in despair. “What about my scholarship? What about my future, my life?” he began to ask himself.
These are tough questions for an 18-year-old from a poor neighborhood in Managua, who, for security reasons, asks not to be identified by his real name or the name of his neighborhood. Álvaro is angry for several reasons. First, he feels his freedom to voice his disagreement and express himself has been taken away. And second, because this NGO represented the most tangible hope of avoiding a ‘miserable future.’ His family is poor: his father is a mechanic, and his mother takes on occasional jobs cleaning other people’s homes. They barely manage to support him and his two siblings. So, the course he was taking offered by the organization was the quickest way for him to financially contribute to his household.
“I was in the first few months of the course. The regular course lasted a year and a half… and it was amazing because not only would I graduate as a qualified technician, but I also spent almost the entire day at the Foundation: they provided meals, uniforms, and even bus fare to attend classes and return home,” Álvaro explains.
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Álvaro was confident he would graduate in less than seven months and felt relieved because, in addition to all the support he got from the scholarship, the Hedwig and Robert Foundation had a job placement program to help graduates find jobs in Nicaraguan companies. “In 90% of cases, graduates found a job,” he says, based on his friends’ experiences.
But the regime’s decision, executed by MINT, has not only shattered Álvaro’s dreams but also those of thousands of Nicaraguans who relied on the more than 3,500 NGOs shut down by the Sandinista government as of April 2024. This is part of its policy to eradicate critical voices and impose total control over society, a campaign that began in 2018 following social protests.
The Hedwig and Robert Foundation — established in Germany in 1932 — had been operating in Managua since the early 1990s, after the Sandinista revolution was defeated by former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. It was located in the Unidad de Propósito neighborhood in Managua. The foundation employed 18 people, and in 2022, 94 out of 102 enrolled students graduated from its technical programs. Within the next six months, the NGO’s management placed 88 of these students in different jobs, representing 94% of the class.
Aside from the confiscation of NGO properties, the closure of these organizations has dealt a significant economic blow to Nicaraguans. According to an analysis of the financial records of 600 confiscated NGOs by Manuel Orozco, a researcher at the Inter-American Dialogue, the country lost $580,526,614 in donations.
In assessing the impact of NGO closures between 2018 and 2022, Orozco found that the cancellation of just the first 53 organizations resulted in losses of about $200 million, not including international NGOs. He then examined 600 NGOs with similar profiles to those initially closed and calculated a total loss of $580,526,614.
“The closure of a thousand non-profit organizations, of which 500 were regularly active, is another blow by the regime to freedom of association,” Orozco states in a report presented at the Inter-American Dialogue.
“Many vulnerable groups have been left even more unprotected, and there is a brain drain from the non-profit sector. These organizations were committed to essential social development projects, half of which were related to education.”
Orozco emphasizes that the material losses — in a country where most children have few opportunities and the average educational level is below the fourth grade — amount to at least $200 million per year, excluding the expulsion of 56 international NGOs, which affected nearly a million beneficiaries.
One of those beneficiaries is Álvaro. He has been left in limbo and now helps his father in the mechanic shop without pay, which makes him feel desperate. He feels he still isn’t financially contributing to his family’s needs. Although the government has established some technical schools in the buildings of confiscated NGOs, he says he isn’t comfortable with the education provided by the government. When I ask him why, he can’t explain. He simply says he “doesn’t like it.” Plain and simple. Instead, he has considered the humanitarian parole program to migrate to the United States, but he hasn’t found a sponsor to support his application. The future free from misery that he longed for remains uncertain.
Educational NGOs took the hardest hit
An analysis by Redacción Regional reveals that of the more than 3,500 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) shut down since 2018, 23% were focused on education, 13% on health, 13.5% on governance, 11.18% on human rights, and 11% on development, among other sectors. Researcher Manuel Orozco is particularly alarmed that educational organizations have taken the hardest hit.
However, the regime’s crackdown knows no bounds, and its impact continues to escalate. On Monday, August 19, the presidential couple delivered one of the most severe blows to NGOs: they canceled 1,500 entities in one fell swoop. In total, 5,163 organizations have been dissolved since 2018. The government accuses them of “failing to report their financial statements for periods ranging from one to 35 years,” a common excuse in this state policy of suppressing any organization outside the regime’s control.
Among the 1,500 newly dissolved NGOs, the majority are evangelical and Catholic, which is no coincidence. The government continues its religious persecution in the country, particularly against Catholicism. Although evangelical church leaders have been close to the government, in recent months they have been overwhelmed by a totalitarian model through the dissolution of their NGOs. The newly closed organizations include those working in social, business, medical, indigenous, sports, veterans’ affairs, lawyers’ associations, and educational fields.
“The impact is real, but it’s difficult to measure because NGOs played a complementary, not supplementary, role in Nicaraguan education: feeding students, supporting and training teachers. These organizations were well aware of the academic weaknesses of the students, but even so, the full extent of the educational setbacks in the country is not well understood,” Orozco says.
Nicaragua, after Guatemala, is one of the Central American countries that invests the least in education. A report by Oxfam Central America, titled “Inequalities and Taxation in Central America,” notes that Nicaragua invests only 3.68% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in all levels of education.
In the absence of reliable official information, the latest data on Nicaragua’s education investment is from 2021. That year, the Ortega-Murillo regime reduced education investment by 0.65% compared to 2020. In 2021, 20 billion córdobas, or $571.9 million, were allocated to education, equating to less than $70 per capita.
The cut was linked to a drop in revenues caused by the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Ironically, since the 2018 protests, and even amid the pandemic, while social spending was cut, the regime increased the budget for the National Police, an institution accused by human rights organizations of repressing young people and committing serious human rights violations.
However, the lack of prioritization is historical. Despite the Sandinista regime’s claims that “education is a priority,” in the last decade, since Ortega has been in power, education investment has never exceeded the 4% GDP threshold. This low investment has left the education system with persistent shortages, particularly in poor infrastructure and a crisis in educational quality.
That’s why, according to an education expert who wishes to remain anonymous, the closure of NGOs linked to education should be alarming. “If Nicaragua were a country where the state covered all the costs associated with providing quality education, the closure of NGOs would be relatively insignificant. But in a country where education not only fails to meet the minimum quality standards required to survive in today’s world — that is, fundamental learning skills that are always necessary — it also lacks what is needed for the onset of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” she asserts. “We are in a process where work is increasingly becoming automated, and the skills required for people in training are opposed to those outlined in the current curriculum.”
The education expert, who has over two decades of experience, emphasizes that teachers not only lack adequate teaching materials for lessons, but in most cases, they are also products of the same flawed education system. “On top of that, families invest more than the state in ensuring their children attend school. There are many places, like the Caribbean region, where the Ministry of Education has no coverage. So, in the midst of these deficiencies, NGOs were filling the role of the state. But now, without these organizations, the population is left completely abandoned.”
In the case of the Fabretto Foundation in San José de Cusmapa, the local population tried to prevent the confiscation of the school. However, the police cracked down on them. “It’s a stab to the heart; they touched the most sacred thing in this town,” said one of the mothers. The organization was allegedly canceled for failing to submit financial reports to the Registry and Control Department of the Ministry of the Interior. At the time of its closure, Fabretto managed eight educational centers located in Nueva Segovia, Madriz, Estelí, Chinandega, Managua, Masaya, Granada, and the Southern Caribbean Coast. They served over 40,000 children and adolescents, offering opportunities to improve their futures and break the cycle of poverty in which they lived.
School enrollment rates and the poorest
The Oxfam report highlights that, both in Central America and in Nicaragua, education is not a guarantee of social mobility and is an area where inequalities are inherited. Recent estimates from the 2022 Economy and Development Report by the Latin American Development Bank show that while the proportion of children who complete primary education, despite their parents not finishing it, has gradually increased to over 70% for those born in the 1990s, the success rate for high school education in similar situations is only 42%.
“These disparities have not lessened in younger generations. Moreover, the likelihood of completing higher education is higher—and has increased more rapidly—for children whose parents have university degrees compared to those whose parents have only high school or lower education. The percentage of children who earn university degrees without their parents having done so is very low, around 15% for those born in the 1990s, and this figure has barely changed for younger generations,” Oxfam reports.
The Ortega-Murillo regime has confiscated over 20 private universities in Nicaragua. The most famous case is the Central American University (UCA), administered by the Jesuits. Students are now forced to study at regime-run universities where, as they themselves report, partisan political influences have infiltrated higher education. Hundreds of UCA students have chosen to study either in-person or virtually at other Jesuit universities in Central America, while others see migration as their last option for a future. A country on the run: more than a million Nicaraguans have left since 2018. They felt stuck in Nicaragua.
The education expert consulted by Redacción Regional argues that if we talk about being stuck, it should be traced back to before 2018, particularly in primary education. The school enrollment rate in Nicaragua has been the same since 2006, especially in primary education, when it was at 90%. However, in a report presented by the government in 2013, when they still published information, it remained within the same range.
“The government presented an adjusted enrollment rate, not even a net rate, because they had changed the indicator. We were stuck. So, the easy part of access had been achieved in the country. The hard part remained. What is the hard part? The poorest,” the education expert questions.
“That 10% represents a challenge for an education system that was conceived in the 17th century, not just in Nicaragua, but globally. But now, with this crisis and the lack of information, what is the net enrollment rate? We don’t know. We don’t know the size of the problem we have. We are facing a setback in access and most likely a setback in learning. Many teachers tell me that children are reaching fourth and fifth grade without knowing how to read.”
In this context of primary and secondary education, in November 2023, the Ministry of Education implemented the “zero red” strategy, meaning passing all students. “They say that if we use red ink, we are causing trauma to the students,” explained a teacher who taught in a public school in the city of Masaya at that time.
The use of red ink to mark poor or mediocre academic grades was prohibited in meetings between Ministry of Education delegates and government technical staff with teachers, prior to the start of the 2023 school year. “At that time, we didn’t pay much attention to it, but halfway through the year, it became a complete requirement,” said the teacher.
Far from banning red ink because it “affects students,” the order to use blue ink, according to a source at the Ministry of Education, is solely intended to ensure that the evaluation plan is fully implemented and that the national failure rate, currently at 7%, drops to 1% by the end of the year. “I’ve received complaints from teachers who disagree with this government policy, but we can’t change the orders that come from above. Their goal is far from achieving quality education,” stated the source from the Ministry of Education.
In April of this year, DIVERGENTES, which is part of Redacción Regional, published an investigation that revealed for the first time the new learning evaluation system ordered by the Sandinista regime through the Ministry of Education. The goal is to ensure that no student fails, even if they “miss half the year” or submit consistently poor assignments.
Under this new plan, the Ministry of Education (Mined) opted to change the scoring system. Instead of teachers grading exams based on students’ knowledge, educational authorities established evaluation categories with minimum and maximum points. According to the manual, the evaluative categories are: Advanced Learning (AL), which ranges from 90 to 100 points; Satisfactory Learning (SA), scored between 76 and 89 points; Fundamental Learning (FL), with a maximum score of 75 and a minimum of 60 points; and Initial Learning (IL), with a maximum score of 59 and a minimum of 45 points.
“Here’s the catch. If we take the minimum score set by Mined and replace the categories with numbers, we get a 45, a 90, and a 76. So, the final grade would be 76. That grade could vary if the teacher were the one assigning it based on the student’s knowledge, but that’s no longer their decision,” explained the same source, who also pointed out that by removing the teacher’s ability to grade according to each student’s prior knowledge, the result is essentially fictitious grades.
Increasing inequality
The education expert argues that these deficiencies in the education system, combined with the closure of NGOs, only serve to deepen inequality in Nicaragua. A common enlightenment-era hypothesis suggests that education is the best tool for promoting social mobility.
“But when that education is of poor quality, it perpetuates poverty. When the person teaching you to read is someone who emerged from the same deficient educational system, they’re just reproducing their own deficits. We’ve known this for many years. So, what can we expect, even without data, about the situation of the poorest? It’s much more precarious,” the education expert asserts. “Many more poor children drop out of school due to opportunity costs. If I send my child to school, I’m making a big investment; and if the school doesn’t return that investment, then I prefer not to send them. I don’t know the exact percentage of children who have dropped out, but we can hypothesize that in the midst of political conflict, crimes against humanity by the dictatorship, COVID-19, and the withdrawal of all these NGOs, there has been an increase in dropouts.”
Haydée Castillo, former director of the NGO Instituto de Liderazgo de Las Segovias, an organization focused on local work in various areas such as primary and secondary education, technical education, and women’s empowerment, agrees with the education expert. The closure of NGOs, she says, impacts the most vulnerable areas of Nicaragua. Her organization worked in the northern part of the country, in rural areas. They built schools, provided educational supplies to schools, distributed meals, and trained rural teachers, offering them scholarships to study at private universities.
“We also gave scholarships to outstanding students to pursue technical or university degrees. But this has been happening for a while: back in 2008, after the dictatorship returned to power, we were already being prevented from entering the schools we built. We had to give school supplies to the children under trees by the road. The building of the Instituto de Liderazgo de Las Segovias was built with the idea of founding the University of Las Segovias, with courses tailored to the region, but we weren’t allowed to,” recounts Castillo, who has always been a vocal critic of the Ortega-Murillo regime but is now in exile since 2018.
The Instituto de Liderazgo de Las Segovias also promoted, with the cooperation of Galicia, the inclusion of the history of the indigenous people of Mozonte in the educational curriculum. Mozonte is one of the poorest municipalities in Nicaragua, with more than 6,000 people, most of whom are Chorotega descendants. In December 2018, the Sandinista Parliament revoked the legal status of the Instituto de Liderazgo de Las Segovias.
“Thus, the entire population was left unprotected, without these educational programs that neither the local nor the national governments provided. We coordinated our projects with local governments, regardless of whether they were right or left-wing, and we even brought medical brigades with specialties that didn’t exist in the Ocotal hospital. We managed to care for almost 10,000 people with kidney and orthopedic problems,” Castillo narrates. “These were services we also provided to the community. What we promoted was a philosophy of development, of community empowerment. If latrines needed to be built, we would provide one part and the community another. In other words, the government’s policy of closing NGOs has caused very deep harm to the communities.”
In light of Castillo’s experience—now in exile—the Oxfam report suggests that these educational inequalities have subsequent implications for labor market insertion. They reduce the chances of accessing quality and better-paid jobs.
“This leads to inequalities in education during childhood and youth, or for historically excluded groups such as indigenous populations, being maintained or even increased in adulthood upon entering the labor market. It is imperative that education spending in the region be sufficient to close the gaps that still keep millions of children and young people out of school in the region,” Oxfam recommends.
The end of civil society in Nicaragua
Two days before Ortega and Murillo ordered the dissolution of a group of 1,500 NGOs, the head of the Ministry of the Interior (MINT), María Amelia Coronel Kinloch, signed a ministerial agreement on August 16, the same day that the presidential couple announced “a new operational model for NGOs” that forces these organizations to work exclusively in “partnerships with state entities.”
“The new operational model requires NGOs to submit specific proposals for partnership programs and projects to state entities, around particular themes,” stated a note released by the regime last Friday. “The Government and state entities may or may not accept the proposals, and no program or project will be subject to exemptions or other tax benefits.”
Ministerial Agreement 38-2024-OSFL stipulates that “the destination of the movable and immovable property” of the NGOs “will be transferred to the State of Nicaragua.” This task falls to the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, effectively amounting to a de facto confiscation, which is prohibited by the Political Constitution. A report by the Pro Transparency and Anti-Corruption Observatory (OPTA) on confiscations in Nicaragua provided an initial estimate in May of the impact on NGOs: they calculated that the value of 41 properties confiscated from NGOs was approximately 8.5 million dollars. These confiscations were carried out in violation of Law 147, the General Law on Non-Profit Legal Entities, which states that NGOs will determine the destination of their liquidated assets in case of closure according to their constitutive acts or statutes.
According to political analysts consulted by Redacción Regional and DIVERGENTES, this “new model” strips NGOs of the autonomy of their projects while imposing total control over the resources they receive. “It is the end of civil society in Nicaragua,” said Félix Maradiaga, a former political prisoner banished by the presidential couple.
“It is a direct and blatant attack on the very essence of civil society. Under the excuse of reorganizing the sector, the regime aims to build a legal framework that nullifies any form of independent citizen participation, subjecting non-governmental organizations to totalitarian control. This is nothing more than the culmination of a repressive process that has led to the closure of more than 3,600 NGOs in the country,” Maradiaga says.
The former presidential candidate asserts that “in the paranoid minds of Ortega and Murillo,” any organization that maintains even a minimum of independence is seen as a threat. He claims that the regime’s intention is clear: “They will only allow the existence of organizations that remain completely submissive, willing to act as mere intermediaries of international cooperation, without daring to question authoritarian policies or denounce human rights violations. This new form is, in reality, a death sentence for civil society in its most sacred sense: that of a free, participatory, and critical citizenry,” he adds.
The denationalized opposition leader laments that many international cooperation agencies, especially those working with the most vulnerable sectors of the population, may be forced to accept the rules of the Ortega-Murillo regime in order to continue providing the urgently needed aid in Nicaragua.
“However, by doing so, these agencies would be validating a scheme that not only silences civil society but also reinforces Ortega and Murillo’s absolute control over the country,” he asserts. “It cannot be allowed that, in the name of humanitarian urgency, the independence and freedom of civil society are sacrificed. True justice and sustainable development will only be achieved in an environment where critical voices can be heard and where civil society can operate without fear of repression.”