The Nicaraguan dictatorship canceled the legal personality of 15 non-profit organizations, the first with which it makes this decision in 2025, after the more than 5,400 NGOs closed by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo since 2018.
On January 8, the official newspaper The Gazette reported the “voluntary dissolution” of 11 organizations, including Save the Children and the Dominican Nuns of Nicaragua Foundation.
Receive the main news from ACI Prensa by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social media. Subscribe to our free channels today:
According to your websiteSave the Children has been working in Nicaragua since 1986, “although we supported Nicaraguan girls, boys and adolescents after the 1972 earthquake in Managua.”
“Save the Children’s work in Nicaragua focuses on four programmatic areas: Education, Health and Nutrition, Governance of Children’s Rights and Child Protection; in addition to having the capacity to respond to possible humanitarian situations,” he adds, specifying that there are 46 people from the organization who work in Managua and Matagalpa.
Others of the 11 organizations canceled due to “voluntary dissolution” are the Ebenezer Christian Missionary Foundation, the Fundamental Baptist Church Association of Matagalpa and the Help for Nicaragua Foundation.
The other four organizations canceled “for being in breach of their obligations” are: Fundación Casa de Espirituality, Culture, History, Anthropology, Archeology and Nicaraguan Art (CECHAN), the Association of Comprehensive Services for Women (Yes Woman), the Fundación Ministerio Pentecost Christ Comes and the Prinzapolka River Foundation.
The decision to cancel the 15 organizations was announced through two ministerial agreements approved by the Minister of the Interior, María Amelia Coronel Kinloch.
In 2024, the dictatorship canceled around 1,700 nonprofit organizations. Only on August 19 of last year, the dictatorship closed a total of 1,500 organizations, of which 678 were Christian, including Catholics and evangelicals.
In its 2025 global report, the evangelical organization International Christian Concern denounced that the dictatorship has used the Ministry of the Interior for persecution against “hundreds of churches, aid groups and other religious organizations” and has closed 315 religious organizations in 2023.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.