By Pamela Neumann*

March against violence in Managua, November 2014. Oxfam en Nicaragua / Flickr / Creative Commons

Recent actions by the Nicaraguan government directly conflict with its obligations under accords on gender-based violence, but regional mechanisms, including the OAS, have not been effective at holding Managua to account. The 1994 Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (Belém do Pará), which Nicaragua ratified in 1995, defines violence against women as any act of physical, sexual, or psychological violence occurring in either the public or private sphere (Article I, III) and obligated state signatories to establish fair and effective legal procedures to address crimes against women (Article VII). The Convention also stipulated that States report steps taken to prevent and prohibit gender-based violence (Article X). In 2004, the OAS introduced a Follow-up Mechanism (MESECVI) to provide additional technical assistance and more closely monitor state actions.

Nicaragua has not submitted information to MESECVI since 2008, and its performance has become even more problematic in subsequent years. In 2012, the government passed a comprehensive law on gender-based violence (Law 779), which significantly advanced women’s legal rights and protections. Over the last three years, however, the law has been substantially undermined by legislative reforms and executive decrees. For example, mediation, an informal practice police historically used to resolve cases, was first eliminated and then reinstated. Mediation puts women’s lives at significant risk because there are no legal consequences for violating the non-binding agreements it produces. In addition, beginning in 2014, women seeking to file a legal complaint for gender-based violence were sent to neighborhood councils or the Ministry of the Family for counseling instead. Police units charged with handling domestic violence cases have been closed for over a year.

The OAS has been leaning hard on Nicaragua to address threats to its electoral process – forging an agreement last month allowing the OAS to send a team to observe municipal elections in November – but its performance as arbiter of signatories’ adherence to the Belém do Pará Convention has been less effective. The convention’s enforcement mechanisms are limited; the main recourse that individuals or organizations have is to submit a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which can forward it to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR). But action is inhibited by the stipulation that cases are only admissible when “remedies under domestic law have been pursued and exhausted” and because current regional agreements do not allow for any specific OAS-IACHR action to be taken on the basis of legislative action or inaction. The OAS’s existing instruments, moreover, put the burden on individual aggrieved parties to demonstrate the state’s intentional complicity in denying women due process. This requires showing evidence of state officials actively impeding one particular investigation or engaging in violent acts themselves. Numerous studies, including my own research, have shown that such behavior is in fact ubiquitous, but less than 1 percent of cases even make it to trial. Despite good intentions, the legal remedies afforded by the OAS tend to individualize and privatize the problem of gender-based violence – and the Nicaraguan government is not being held accountable for its failure to prevent or punish fundamental violations of women’s human rights.

March 30, 2017

*Pamela Neumann is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Stone Center for Latin American Studies, Tulane University.