NicaNotes

April 16, 2026

By Martha L. Schmidt

[Martha Schmidt is an international human rights lawyer and activist who focuses on the right to health. She lives in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. and has participated in several recent solidarity delegations to Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba.]

During our visit to Nicaragua, we learned how Nicaragua views international human rights, including collective rights to peace, development, and to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment all based on its emphasis on social, economic and cultural (ESC) rights, and its commitment to the institutions of international law, centered on the UN and International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The International Committee’s Human Rights Framework Subcommittee of the National Lawyers Guild recognizes that human rights begin at home, and one of our activities has been to carry out the oversight of US violations of the right to health as laid out by the UN Human Rights Council to try to hold the US accountable. Thus, we came to Nicaragua especially interested in health.

Coming from the US, we wanted to build a relationship of solidarity with Nicaragua around human rights: to listen, try to understand history and avoid reinforcing hegemony and imperialism, not to expect Nicaraguans to mirror US priorities.  As a sovereign state, Nicaragua can be free from American Exceptionalism. (That ideology has elevated property rights over human rights and perverted human rights discourse in the US.) Knowing how exceptionalism has created hierarchies of rights, with religion and speech ranked above health, housing, education and an adequate standard of living, and aware that the US government rejects collective rights, especially the right to peace, we hoped to learn the Nicaraguan approach. We chose economic, social, and cultural (ESC) rights as a focus, also, because a substantial minority of the US population rejects those as rights.

Our delegation had the privilege of meeting with Nicaragua’s ambassador to the UN; the central bank president; former diplomats and lawyers involved with representing Nicaragua at the UN and in litigation before the International Court of Justice; members of the National Assembly; heads of the ministries of health, education, youth, and disaster prevention and mitigation; the Managua mayor’s office; and leaders of an agricultural cooperative.

An overarching experience was seeing and hearing about Nicaragua’s commitment to achieving women’s equality, an important international human rights achievement. It is no small accomplishment that Nicaragua is globally recognized as the sixth most equal country for women! Nicaragua’s delegation to the UN is majority women. The National Assembly has over 50% women and women are equally represented in the leadership of the National Assembly Commission on Affairs of First Nations, Afro-descendant Peoples and Nations, and Autonomous Regions. The mayor of the largest city, Managua, is a woman and her staff, whom we met, reflect the equal status of women in leadership. In our meetings with the ministries, women were both heads of the ministries or administrative branch advisors to ministries, sometimes both. These included MINSA (health), MINED (education), SINAPRED (disaster prevention and mitigation) and MINJUVE (youth). We also heard about Nicaragua’s efforts to bring the rest of the world up to a higher standard of equality, including at the last environmental Conference of the Parties (COP) in Rio when Nicaragua tried to get a 50% quota rule adopted for women’s participation, which Brazil supported, but which Western governments rejected. It’s clear that women gain equality when a state makes ESC rights—especially education, health, and housing—publicly financed and freely accessible. Nicaragua’s universal, single payer-financed health care system and free schooling through university level are key.

While people in the US may be aware of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment they may not have heard of the rights to peace and to development. We learned of their importance to Nicaragua and their interdependence with individual ESC rights. They guide the domestic policies and are given priority by representatives of Nicaragua internationally. For example, Nicaragua has long been involved in negotiations to address climate change through the UN system, advocating for the Less Developed Countries (LDCs), and was instrumental in creating the Green Climate Fund, while it transitioned to a domestic economy in which 80% of its electrical grid is from renewables according to the Ministry of Energy and Mines. Nicaragua makes the eradication of extreme poverty a key part of its development plan and its large investment priorities are infrastructure, housing/social housing, health and education. It also has developed its own set of measurements of development, finding the World Bank focus on consumption was insufficient. (It stopped using it after 2015.) It factors in more nuanced criteria such as where people live, what kind of house they have (floor, roof, etc.), what fuel is used, their income, education, and access to water and food, as Central Bank President Ovidio Reyes told us.

Nicaragua, exercising its national sovereignty, gives priority to the rights to health, education, housing, an adequate standard of living, and rest, leisure and participation in cultural life, including technology. We saw how human rights decisions were based on their version of a socialist society, with a good life for everyone, and incorporating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into their Constitution. The priority accorded to ESC rights is highly interdependent with the right to development and their economic conditions. In our long, informative meeting with the president of the Central Bank, Ovidio Reyes confirmed that health and education get the majority of funding.

This provided me an opportunity to think about the linkage between national priorities, budgeting and the realization of human rights, since what I see presently in the US is that, despite spending the most in the world on health care, the US has poor outcomes because the right to health is sacrificed for the profits of health capitalists. In our meeting with MINSA (and from my experience in a 2024 health care delegation), I learned that to have good community-based and preventative care, and equitable outcomes you don’t need to have the wealth of the US. But you do need political will, a good constitution and set of laws, as well as public support for health care and public health (like clean water, reduction of accidental deaths, control of insect vectors, etc.). A commitment to investment in health care facilities and services and to prioritizing the remedying of past inequality is essential as the system develops, and the more established system has to continue to adapt, funding and developing alternative remedies and products, providing new opportunities for education and training of physicians and providers to improve the health care system.

Besides constructing a system that provides universal access, free at the point of service, with priority for improving women’s health, and reducing maternal and infant mortality, health care and public health in Nicaragua are integrated in important ways, involving ministries besides MINSA, such as SINAPRED (disaster prevention and mitigation) and MINJUVE (youth). The coordinated and humane approach to health affected me greatly, given recent disasters in the US involving fires and flooding, with loss of life and lack of effective responses for survivors. Nicaragua’s commitment and organization to protect health and save lives, among other things, resulted in zero deaths after the most recent hurricane.

We discussed US economic aggression against Nicaragua, which many rights activists in the US barely acknowledge, if they know. These are Unilateral Coercive Measures (UCMs)—also known as sanctions—adopted by both the Executive Branch and Congress against Nicaragua, which are deliberately intended to damage Nicaragua’s ability to fulfill the human rights of its people. The US uses illegal UCMs to impair Nicaragua’s ability as a sovereign state to engage in ordinary and necessary economic activities. Some violations are years long, like blocking Nicaragua (when the FSLN is the governing party) from using the IMF, the IBRD of the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank. Despite US violations, Nicaragua operates by law and in the interests of its people, continuing to pay existing loans, serious about financing development, conducting operations accountably, and, according to the central bank’s president, reducing its foreign debt for the period 2006-2026 from 84% of GDP to 50% of GDP.

A current sanctions scheme we should work to stop is another bill (NICA Act) in Congress to cut Nicaragua off from loans from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), a bank in which Nicaragua has shares of ownership and of which the US isn’t even a member. When you consider that more than 50% of Nicaragua’s annual national budget is devoted to health care and education, the violence and potential impact on vulnerable people of US economic warfare is crystal clear.

We appreciated the unique and valuable opportunities to learn the history of Nicaragua’s roles as a UN member, including its presidency of the General Assembly (2008-2009), its ground-breaking uses of the International Court of Justice, its foreign relations with other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, its leadership in gender equality and support for multilateralism. We heard from Nicaragua’s Permanent Representative to the UN and other diplomats, current and retired, as well as from a lawyer who was part of team which litigated the 1986 ICJ case. We were impressed by Nicaragua’s leadership in supporting the principle of self-determination of peoples, with its service as vice-president on the Committee for the Exercise of the Rights of the Palestinian People and long history of supporting Palestinian self-determination. Besides being the first state to petition to join South Africa’s case against Israel pending before the ICJ, Nicaragua filed its own case two years ago against Germany for complicity in genocide and other crimes.

We explored the solidarity potential of the International Court of Justice decision that Nicaragua won against the US in 1986, titled “Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua” for which the US never paid court-ordered reparations (estimated to be about $17 billion), We knew that tens of thousands of people were murdered and many more injured in the Contra War of the 1980s, and we knew about the murderous Reagan administration, which accused Nicaragua of terrorism and arms trafficking and financed the war by importing drugs from Central America into Black communities in the US. In its 1986 decision, the ICJ rejected the phony argument of the US, that it was engaging in “collective self-defense” on behalf of the government of El Salvador in funding the Contras. This case is now useful to mention when the Trump administration lies that Nicaragua is currently involved in drug trafficking, also because the US is resurrecting collective self-defense, along with drug trafficking and terrorism accusations, to justify murdering Venezuelan, Colombian and Trinidadian sailors on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, according to a quasi-secret memo of the Office of the Legal Counsel of the US DOJ.

The Court’s decision in Nicaragua’s favor stands out as a high point for justice. Customary law principles (also in the UN Charter) were violated by the US: the duty not to use force against another country, the duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of another country, the duty to respect the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of another country. We learned that the decision for Nicaragua was historic. For the Global South it was a turning point, a significant case which built confidence in the ICJ as an institution and that communicated to formerly colonized states that it might be possible to get a fair result from an international system designed by the colonizers. The Nicaragua v. United States of America decision was a “moral defeat for imperialism,” as Harold Urbina said in an interview in March 2025.

The case “Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua” can be used to prevent the historical forgetting of US war-mongering and for resisting the information narrative which the US promotes continuously to confuse the US public so we will accept more war (stopping “authoritarians” and bringing “human rights”). Nicaraguans are not confused by the US in their support for the right to peace and development. Although in 2001 the Bush administration declared the FSLN a “terrorist organization,” the FSLN was returned to power in the 2006 elections, after which they began to reverse the damage of neoliberalism. Despite US financing of an attempted coup against Nicaragua using the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 2018, the coup was stopped (not without deaths and injuries and lasting trauma to people, as we heard). The 2021 elections confirmed that the vast majority of the electorate doesn’t want neoliberalism and supports the co-Presidents and the FSLN agenda.

US human rights activists who admire Nicaragua’s accomplishments must exercise

vigilance so we can be in solidarity when US aggression accelerates, as it will. It’s likely

to consist of NED interference, e.g. the plan to target Nicaragua with NED media funding, according to testimony by the NED head on 2/24/26 to the House Appropriations Committee. It may be military, e.g. the US 2025 National Security Strategy to prevent exercise of sovereign decisions, which for Nicaragua could especially involve relations with Cuba, Venezuela, and China. The March 2026 statements made by Marco Rubio in Munich and Trump and SOUTHCOM leaders in Miami at “Counter-Cartel Coalition” and “Shield of the Americas” meetings may provide cover to regional right-wing leaders aligned with the US to increase militarism and justify violence launched against Nicaragua and other states with left wing governments. We can resist in part by naming those violations of international law and by emphasizing the unfinished business of the New International Economic Order which supports popular control over economic resources as a basis for national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

(Special thanks go to Coleen Littlejohn for hospitality and for arranging the meetings for the delegation and to Becca Renk for interpreting.)

Briefs

By Nan McCurdy

Nicaragua Spends US$2.75 Billion on Anti-Poverty Programs in 2025

The Ministry of Finance and Public Credit reported that, in 2025, US$2.75 billion was allocated to programs and projects to combat poverty, representing 97.7% of the updated budget for this category and equivalent to 13.1% of the country’s GDP. This figure exceeds the amount spent in 2024 by 11.6%, and represents 65.5% of the total spending executed by the Central Government during the year.  Within social spending, subsidies and grants were primarily for urban public transportation and subsidies for drinking water and sanitary sewerage nationwide through ENACAL, totaling US$15 million. Spending on poverty alleviation showed significant growth compared to the previous year. While current spending increased by 5.3%, capital spending or investment grew by 20.5%. The largest increases were recorded in the Ministry of Health, up US$1.12 billion; the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, up US$53 million; capital transfers to municipalities, up US$41 million.

As a proportion of Gross Domestic Product, spending on anti-poverty programs rose from 12.4% in 2024 to 13.1% in 2025, an increase of 0.7 percentage points. This increase is mainly due to higher investment spending, which rose from 5.2% to 5.9% of GDP, driven particularly by health and road infrastructure. The report highlights that the increases were financed mostly with domestic resources. (Informe Pastran, 10 April 2026)

Largest Mormon Temple in Central America Opens in Managua in September

The Managua Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has confirmed dates for its highly anticipated open house. This event will allow thousands of people to see the interior of what will be the first “House of the Lord” in the country. Before welcoming the public, a special media day will be held on Monday, September 7, 2026. Then, on September 8 and 9, the temple will open its doors to invited guests only. Starting September 10, the official open house for the general public will begin. Tours will be available until September 26. After the public tours conclude, the temple will be dedicated on October 18, 2026. The dedication will be officiated by Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. [After that, the temple will not be open to the general public; only Mormon tabernacles are open to the general public.] In Nicaragua, there are approximately 104,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, organized into more than 100 congregations. For them, this temple represents a long-held dream. (Informe Pastran, 14 April 2026)

In Celebration of April, the “Acoyapa Bendito” Primary Hospital is Opened

In a joyful atmosphere, accompanied by an orchestra and featuring young artists and athletes, the families of Chontales welcomed the “Acoyapa Bendito” Progressive Primary Hospital. The people of Acoyapa gathered at the roundabout at the entrance to the municipality and then walked to the hospital, which will offer programs for the elderly, physical therapy, and rehabilitation, as well as care for people with disabilities, general medicine, gynecology, and pediatrics, among other services.  “United in commemoration of this month of ‘April, People Defending Peace,’ we receive this medical center. We say at the top of our lungs, thank you Daniel, thank you Rosario, thank you to this revolution for these works that benefit Nicaraguan families. Today we are receiving this hospital as a great blessing for this region, as a great blessing for this department,” said Hassell Aguilar, departmental coordinator of the 19th of July Sandinista Youth in Chontales.

In this first phase, eight consulting rooms, a physiotherapy room, a natural medicine area, a waiting room, a pharmacy, internal medicine, and pediatrics were opened. The hospital will offer various specialties so that the population of Acoyapa will receive dignified and quality healthcare. Dr. Dilma Sirias stated, “This is a dream for the people of Chontales and Acoyapa, who are celebrating with culture, tradition, and joy in this month of peace—peace that means working with love; peace that means providing quality care with compassion to the entire population.” Evangelical pastor José Espinoza expressed his gratitude that his municipality now has a primary hospital, eliminating the need for people to travel to Juigalpa. “This is great news for us because health is one of the nation’s most vital areas, and this will bring much support and assistance. It is truly beautiful how Nicaragua is progressing and prospering; we are very grateful and always pray for our nation to move forward,” Espinoza said. Upon inaugurating the center, political and health authorities pledged to provide dedicated and high-quality care. See photos: https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/175859-conmemorando-el-mes-de-abril-pueblo-que-defiende-la-paz-entrega-hospital-primario-progresivo-acoyapa-bendito%20El%2019  (El 19, 14 April 2026)

Vaccination Campaign Underway in Bluefields

Workers from the Ministry of Health (MINSA) took the campaign to neighborhoods and villages of the municipality of Bluefields, in the South Caribbean, to ensure that children, adults, and seniors complete their vaccination schedules. This initiative is part of the National Vaccination Campaign, which began on April 7 and will conclude on April 30 throughout the country. Health authorities explained that the population will be protected against 18 diseases, with April 26 and 27 serving as the campaign’s peak days. See photos: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/2026/04/12/campana-de-vacunacion-avanza-en-bluefields/ (La Primerisima, 12 April 2026)

First Kidney Transplant for a Child in Nicaragua

The first successful kidney transplant performed on a child at the Dr. Fernando Vélez Paiz Hospital by Nicaraguan specialists marked a significant advance in the specialized care of the Nicaraguan people. The patient is a 12-year-old boy from Nandaime, Granada, who received a kidney donation from his mother, “and this successful procedure will allow this child to have proper growth and development,” said Co-President Rosario Murillo. “We give thanks to God; God’s will is that we live in tranquility, security, and peace, because only peace allows us to achieve that development in all areas, and this, which is the realm of life and hope, is essential for moving toward the future. We congratulate the Nicaraguan specialists and the Ministry of Health who work every day to safeguard life—life with faith, life with love, life in harmony.” (Informe Pastran, 14 April 2026)

Nicaragua: Strong Efforts to Combat Drug Trafficking and Organized Crime

Nicaragua continues to strengthen security and the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime through decisive actions by the Army, noted the Co-President Rosario Murillo, who reported on the seizure of 82 packages of cocaine at Quízalá Beach in San Rafael del Sur, Managua.

Co-President Murillo said that the Naval Force of the Nicaraguan Army at Quízalá Beach in San Rafael del Sur, seized four sacks containing a total of 82 rectangular packages of cocaine that were being transported by a number of individuals. She explained that “upon detecting the presence of the troops, these individuals opened fire on them. An exchange of gunfire ensued, and they then fled, leaving the drugs behind.” Murillo explained that the shipment was handed over to the relevant authorities. She said that this effort “strengthens security and the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime. The successful work of the Army and the National Police makes us feel safe.” See photos: https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/175812-nicaragua-fortalece-seguridad-y-trabajo-contra-el-narcotrafico-y-crimen-organizado  (El 19, 13 April, 2026)

National Surfing Championship Successfully Concludes at El Tránsito Beach

The second day of the National Surfing Championship took place successfully at El Tránsito Beach, located in the municipality of Nagarote, where local athletes, competitors from other departments across the country, and international participants showcased their talent. El Tránsito Beach has established itself as an ideal setting for surfing, thanks to its magnificent waves, which provided optimal conditions for the sport and positioned it as a benchmark for surfing at the national and international levels. The event was organized by the Nicaraguan Surfing Federation, the Nicaraguan Institute of Tourism, and the Alexis Argüello Sports Movement, in coordination with the Nagarote mayor’s office, which supported the event throughout the two-day sports festival. See photos: https://radiolaprimerisima.com/2026/04/13/concluye-con-exito-campeonato-nacional-de-surf-en-el-transito/ (La Primerisima, 13 April 2026)