Nicaragua announced on Thursday it would withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council, following a UN report that urged the international community to address human rights violations by President Daniel Ortega’s government.
Vice President and first lady, Rosario Murillo, called the decision “sovereign and irrevocable,” stating Nicaragua would cease participation in all activities related to the Human Rights Council and its “satellite mechanisms.”
The UN report, released on Wednesday, accuses Ortega and Murillo, who also serves as co-president, of having “transformed the country into an authoritarian state where no independent institutions remain.”
The UN experts urged legal action against Nicaragua, highlighting human rights abuses in the Latin American country, which they said follow patterns that have been previously established as crimes against humanity.
Ortega’s government in the past has ignored reports from the UN and the Organization of American States, which it says are part of an international campaign against it.
Murillo dismissed the UN report as “falsehoods” and “slander.”
In a second day of discussions of the report at the Human Rights Council on Friday a number of countries expressed regret at Nicaragua’s decision to disengage. Spain noted that Nicaragua was the third country to leave the council in a number of days, after Israel and the United States announced they were disengaging.
“This action constitutes an alarming sign of isolation and an attempt (by Nicaragua) to duck its responsibility with regards to its international human rights obligations,” said Ecuador’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Marcelo Vazquez Bermudez – on behalf of a group of countries: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru.
Venezuela criticized the report and accused the Council of double standards and the politicization of human rights.
“We also voice our deep rooted concern in light of the ongoing proliferation of parallel reporting mechanisms and procedures which claim to carry out supposedly impartial assessments on human rights situation … Those reports are mere propaganda pamphlets,” the permanent representative of Venezuela to the United Nations, Yánez Deleuze, said in a statement.
Nicaragua experienced mass anti-government protests in 2018 when Ortega’s crackdown on dissent resulted in the death of more than 350 people and sparked an international outcry over rights abuses.
The UN report also implicated the Nicaraguan army in the violent crackdown, contradicting previous denials.
Reuters