Nicaragua’s Dictatorship Deepens: What Can the International Community Do?

In an address to the country on July 19, the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, Nicaraguan Co-President Daniel Ortega declared that Nicaragua would “never, never, never” hold elections again and would bar all opposition leaders from running in elections. Then, on September 1, the Nicaragua’s National Assembly gave first-round approval to a new constitutional reform that would extend elected terms and postpone elections, constitutionally empowering the regime to exclude opposition candidates and parties, should the measure be approved.

These are the latest in a series of efforts from the Ortega-Murillo regime to consolidate its hold on power and install a dynastic succession. Taken together, they represent a stark deepening of the Nicaraguan democracy void, drawing immediate global pushback for a country that often flies under the radar.

Q1: What is the National Assembly’s reform and what does it mean?

A1: The proposed reform extends the presidential term from six years to seven. Consequently, the election scheduled for November 2026 would be postponed until 2028. All other elected officials, as well as army and police chiefs, would also see their mandate extended to seven years. Additionally, the reform bars anyone “linked to coup attempts, foreign financing, international sanctions, or acts against sovereignty,” or any “traitor” to the nation, from running in elections.

This proposed reform not only cements the isolation of the opposition but also paves the way for the continuation of the regime after Ortega. Co-president Rosario Murillo, who is comparatively less popular within government ranks, presents herself as the guardian of her husband’s legacy and has strategically removed anyone inside the Sandinista movement able to contest her succession. Increasing the length of the presidential term decreases her chances of having to face an election with only her name on the ballot. Furthermore, it gives the regime time to strategize a power handover to their children, specifically to Laureano Ortega Murillo, who has been tasked with the handling of his family’s businesses. How other stakeholders in government—and, more importantly, the armed forces and elite capital owners—would react to this family-centered dynastic transition remains an open question.

Q2: How have China and Russia deepened their engagement with Nicaragua?

A2: Both China and Russia (and, to a lesser extent, Iran) have deepened their engagement with the Central American dictatorship in 2026, including in the security domain. In May, the National Assembly authorized the deployment of Chinese and Russian military personnel on Nicaraguan soil, “for military exercises, exchanges, and humanitarian assistance operations.” While additional details are limited, the country also authorized deployments by U.S., Cuban, Venezuelan, and other Central American militaries. The inclusion of the United States in this document likely reflects the regime’s efforts to calibrate its relationship with Washington to avoid greater U.S. scrutiny. However, there is little doubt as to where Managua’s true allegiances lie: Laureano Ortega Murillo has led the charge in signing a flurry of agreements with China and Russia in his capacity as the regime’s de facto foreign minister.

Since at least 2017, Russia has operated a secret GLONASS satellite ground station in Nicaragua that reportedly serves as a signals intelligence collection site. The Russian Interior Ministry operates a facility in Managua as well, which not only serves as a hub for Russian activities in Central America but aids the Ortega-Murillo regime’s own repressive apparatus. Russian electronic monitoring equipment is also critical for internal surveillance and suppression of dissent. Meanwhile, many of the legal frameworks the Ortega-Murillo regime has weaponized to suppress dissent are often modeled after policies such as Russia’s foreign agents law, illustrating how authoritarian regimes tacitly coordinate with one another to share strategies and hold on to power.

China’s recent advances in Nicaragua largely date to 2021, when the country dropped its recognition of Taiwan for China. In subsequent years, Nicaragua signed agreements worth nearly $1.5 billion for a host of infrastructure projects, including airport and road modernization and a new logistics center at the Port of Corinto along the country’s Pacific coast. Analysts have noted that the 15-year repayment schedule for these loans is unusually short for government-to-government infrastructure projects of such scale, while high interest rates and commissions mean Nicaragua could easily fall into the same debt-laden dependency on China that other Latin American countries have struggled to escape. In the mining sector, Chinese extractive industries have been especially eager to capitalize on the Ortega-Murillo regime’s lack of concern for environmental protections. According to a July report from Fundación del Río, as much as 10 percent of Nicaraguan territory may now belong to Chinese companies due to gold mining concessions, many of which border on or cut into protected Indigenous lands. China’s demand for gold has also driven an epidemic of illegal mining, which has spilled over into neighboring Costa Rica, with Nicaraguan miners crossing the border in droves and threatening a wider environmental crisis.

Nicaragua’s engagement with both China and Russia is likely to deepen going forward. The Ortega-Murillo regime cannot afford to go without the economic and security assistance that Beijing and Moscow can provide.

Q3: What regional concerns has Nicaragua’s political crisis created?

A3: Nicaragua poses an urgent security threat, with the country’s large-scale displacement, irregular migration, and transnational repression undermining stability across the Western Hemisphere. Specifically, migration, both in and out of Nicaragua, remains at the core of security concerns for the region. Following the 2018 government crackdown, an estimated 838,363 Nicaraguans fled the country, the largest wave out of Nicaragua in history. Neighboring Costa Rica received over 200,000 Nicaraguan migrants by 2023, overwhelming the asylum system and straining public services. Large groups of Nicaraguan migrants have also been reported in Mexico, where more than 8,700 applied for asylum in the first 11 months of 2022 alone. The Trump administration’s cancelation of Temporary Protected Status for Nicaraguans in 2025 could push an additional wave of migration out of the United States into Mexico and other Central American countries, potentially straining public resources and escalating bilateral tensions throughout the region. 

State-sponsored transnational repression in neighboring countries also raises serious security concerns. The United Nations has documented that the Ortega-Murillo regime has extended its repressive apparatus beyond Nicaragua’s borders, targeting exiled political opponents, journalists, human rights defenders, and other perceived critics through digital surveillance, hacking, online harassment, espionage, threats, and physical violence. Nicaraguan authorities have also abused international mechanisms, including the misuse of Interpol Red Notices, to pursue individuals abroad. In its most serious manifestations, this campaign has created fears of targeted violence and killings, particularly among Nicaragua’s large exile community in neighboring Costa Rica, especially after the killing of prominent dissenter Roberto Samcam in San José. The United Nations cites at least a dozen reported cases of killings or attempted killings of exiled critics, while human rights observers have documented the existence of a state apparatus that hunts down dissidents worldwide.

This exportation of state repression presents neighboring governments with a security challenge that extends well beyond protecting individual dissidents. Additional counterintelligence, law-enforcement, asylum, and protective resources are required, while normal judicial and police cooperation with Managua is threatened.

Q4: What is the state of the Nicaraguan opposition?

A4: Inside Nicaragua, the opposition is considered effectively defunct, with no remaining domestic structure present. The Ortega-Murillo regime has systemically dismantled, imprisoned, and exiled opposition figures, leaving the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) overwhelmingly dominant in Nicaragua’s political system. Today, most exiled opposition party leaders are located in neighboring Costa Rica, the United States, or Spain, where the Nicaraguan authorities continue to subject them to threats and attacks, constraining their ability to organize abroad. More than 400 exiles have been stripped of their nationality, while their relatives located in Nicaragua remain effectively hostages of the regime.

Despite these pressures, several opposition coalitions continue to operate openly in exile, though fragmentation and competing strategies remain significant obstacles. Ideological differences and disagreements on the correct approach further impede inter-group collaboration. While the opposition has created mechanisms to coordinate and manage differing viewpoints, there are also concerns that leaders in exile are disconnected from the country’s internal reality and fraught with mistrust of one another, calling into question whether they could spring into action if given a window of opportunity to challenge the Ortega-Murillo regime.

Recent engagements with opposition leaders have renewed hope for a more organized, unified coalition for democracy. A younger generation of leaders, including a growing number of women, has assumed more prominent roles in multilateral efforts, signaling greater inclusivity within parties and renewed interest in democratic initiatives. Following Daniel Ortega’s announcement that all opposition figures would be banned from elections, exiled coalitions organized with each other to urge the Organization of American States (OAS) to convene an emergency meeting of regional foreign ministers. On August 19, 2026, the OAS adopted a resolution to convene a Meeting of Consultation of ministers of foreign affairs to take appropriate actions under OAS rules and international law.

Q5: What should the United States, the OAS, and the broader international community do?

A5: Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X on September 2 that the United States would implement measures at the OAS meeting “to ensure that the hemisphere stops business as usual with this dictatorship.” The high-level foreign minister’s meeting should be seized as an opportunity to respond to Nicaragua’s accelerating authoritarian consolidation with a coordinated strategy that raises the costs to the regime beyond simply producing yet another resolution or declaration of concern.

Specifically, the United States should increase economic pressure on the regime and its sources of revenue. This should include additional targeted sanctions against officials, family members, and entities implicated in repression and corruption, as well as greater pressure on Nicaragua’s gold sector. This is where Canada could also bring some pressure to bear, as Canadian mining companies have played a major role in Nicaraguan gold production. Canada should leverage its significant commercial connection to Nicaragua’s gold industry by imposing enhanced transparency and due-diligence requirements on Canadian companies operating in the sector, while considering targeted sanctions against mining entities, concession holders, or financial intermediaries shown to generate revenues for sanctioned individuals or the Ortega-Murillo regime. 

The United States could suspend Nicaragua’s trade benefits under the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), even while the free trade agreement does not contain a straightforward mechanism for expelling a member. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has already laid the groundwork for this possibility in its Section 301 investigation, which outlined a range of actions, including suspension, withdrawal, or prevention of application of CAFTA-DR benefits for Nicaragua, along with additional tariffs. Such action could impose substantial economic costs while preserving CAFTA-DR for other members. Article 21.2(b) of the agreement, which allows a party to make exceptions to the agreement for “the protection of its own essential security interests,” could be another mechanism the United States may consider in light of Nicaragua’s hybrid threats to U.S. security.

OAS foreign ministers should explicitly call on the European Union to examine the political and human rights provisions of its Association Agreement with Central America. Article 1 makes respect for democratic principles, fundamental human rights, and the rule of law an “essential element” of the agreement, and the European Parliament has explicitly interpreted this clause as meaning that failure to respect those principles could lead to suspension. The European Union could formally invoke these provisions and consider selectively suspending trade preferences for sectors or companies linked to the regime. Brussels could simultaneously expand its relatively limited sanctions regime against 21 persons and three entities to cover additional Ortega-Murillo family interests, front companies, mining operations, and financial facilitators. Coordinated with U.S. measures, such action could constrain Nicaragua’s access to both its U.S. and European economic relationships while avoiding broad measures that disproportionately harm ordinary Nicaraguans. 

The United States and other democratic shareholders should use their influence within international financial institutions to limit the resources available to the Ortega-Murillo regime. While neither the Inter-American Development Bank nor the World Bank are approving new loans, both still have legacy portfolios which should be carefully monitored, and some new technical assistance still seems to be provided. Shareholders of the Central American Bank for Economic Integration should press the bank to condition future sovereign lending on concrete governance and human-rights benchmarks and strengthen transparency and oversight of existing operations. Across all three institutions, pressure should be carefully calibrated to preserve humanitarian assistance and projects that directly benefit vulnerable Nicaraguans while preventing international development financing from providing discretionary resources or institutional support that helps sustain the regime.

Finally, democratic partners need to prepare for Nicaragua after Ortega. With the domestic opposition dismantled and exile groups facing systemic repression, the United States and its partners should increase support for independent media, civil society, human rights defenders, and efforts to build a more cohesive democratic opposition.

The ongoing democracy crisis tests not only Nicaragua’s resilience but also the region’s ability to preserve democratic governance and reassert institutional integrity. Cooperation, accountability, and continuous international support will be essential to form a united front against authoritarian consolidation.

Christopher Hernandez-Roy is acting director and senior fellow of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Henry Ziemer is a fellow with the Americas Program at CSIS. Kaela Werchniak is a program coordinator and research assistant with the Americas Program at CSIS. Antonella Navarro is an intern with the Americas Program at CSIS.