2023-11-20 20:11:20
Only two years after Nicaragua presented it to the Organization of American States (OAS), it finally became effective. In 2021, President Daniel Ortega decided to turn his back on the OAS in protest of the organization’s refusal to recognize the 2021 elections, in which he was re-elected with his rivals in prison or in exile.
These elections aggravated the crisis that the country was already going through since the anti-government protests of 2018, which left around 300 dead.
The OAS “deeply regrets” that Nicaragua is leaving but emphasizes that its withdrawal “does not nullify the other legal obligations for which it is responsible by virtue of its ratification of other inter-American conventions,” reads a resolution approved unanimously. by the Permanent Council, the organization’s executive body.
Nicaragua “remains obliged to respect all human rights reflected in customary norms (…) in the multilateral conventions” to which it is a party and “those derived from general principles of international law,” he insists, and warns Ortega that “ will continue to pay special attention” to the situation in the country.
“stark violence”
“Disappointment”, “sadness” or “deep unease” were some of the terms used by the countries to describe the state of mind in the OAS, which is willing to welcome Nicaragua back into its fold.
Uruguay launched a plea against “the blatant violence of Mr. Ortega’s dictatorship,” in the words of the Uruguayan ambassador to the OAS, Washington Abdala.
“There is nothing left for him to do, he has broken all the red lines, he has broken absolutely all of them,” said Abdala, who recalled that Ortega is “the one who let Hugo Torres die,” a former comrade-in-arms and later critic of the president who He died in a hospital after spending months in jail. He is “the one who persecutes the Church and “declares stateless people,” he added.
“No, Mr. Ortega, the defense of human rights on the continent is not going to go away so easily, it is not going to be so simple, it should not be so simple and, if it were so simple, he would speak very badly of us because to what are we here? To defend principles, values, democracy, human rights,” he reminded his colleagues by raising his voice.
Others were more considered, especially Brazil, which together with El Salvador inserted a footnote in the resolution.
“We take this opportunity to reiterate our perception that it is necessary to calibrate “political” strategies with constructive and collaborative approaches” because although the possibility of applying punitive measures “can be useful in some contexts” they should not be considered “automatic mechanisms,” stated the Brazilian ambassador to the OAS, Benoni Belli.
Open door
The government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva harbors the “hope that Nicaragua will be able to return to the organization in the future,” he said.
“We must always, always keep open the possibility of promoting a constructive dialogue with the authorities of that sister country,” agreed his Chilean colleague Sebastián Kraljevich.
Canada is also committed to keeping the door open for dialogue and for a genuine commitment with the Nicaraguan government and the hope of one day seeing it return to this family,” of which it has been a part since 1950, said its ambassador to the OAS, Stuart Savage. .
For the United States, “the wrong decision” by Ortega and his wife and vice president Rosario Murillo “is an effort to flee and hide from their continued human rights abuses, including the convictions and mistreatment of unjustly detained political prisoners, such as the bishop ( Rolando) Álvarez, attacks on independent journalism, on journalists and the closure of hundreds of civil society organizations,” said US Representative Giovanni A. Snidle.
A distancing that, according to the Ecuadorian ambassador to the forum Mauricio Montalvo Samaniego, “is a product not of the interest of the noble Nicaraguan people, but of the sordid interest of a government with a questioned democratic legitimacy.”
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