Transnational Governance, Local Politics, and Gender Violence Law in Nicaragua

Abstract

Many Latin American countries have passed laws intended to address femicide and other forms of violence against women. Yet the implementation of these laws has been inconsistent at best. This article analyzes the case of Nicaragua, which passed a comprehensive law on gender-based violence (Law 779) in 2012. While celebrated by local women’s organizations, Law 779 was subsequently weakened through a series of legislative reforms and executive decrees. This article seeks to explain why state actors in Nicaragua initially supported Law 779 and later sought to undermine it. It argues that in contexts characterized by a high concentration of political power like Nicaragua, transnational governance structures are insufficient to ensure the success of gender violence legislation. Through an analysis of Law 779, this article contributes to broader debates about the nature of state legitimacy and the potential of legal advocacy to address violence against women.

Long-term change in the prevalence of intimate partner violence: a 20-year follow-up study in León, Nicaragua, 1995-2016

“…In the 1995 study, there was no association between age and lifetime experiences of physical partner experience. In contrast, the odds of lifetime physical violence in the 2016 study were nearly five times higher among older women (40 to 49) compared with young women [15][16][17][18][19] (COR 4·87; 95% CI 1·68 to 14·08).…”

International Organizations, Nongovernmental Organizations, and Police Implementation of Domestic Violence Policies in Liberia and Nicaragua

“…International cooperation agencies collaborated with local advocates to create Nicaragua's first women's police station in 1993. In 2015, there were 162 such stations throughout the country, serving women and children and operated by female officers (Neumann 2018). This collaborative effort also strengthened street-level responses to domestic violence.…”

“…During the period when women's police stations still operated, there were deficiencies within the police and the women's police stations -including a lack of funding and marginalization within the broader police force. These limitations and setbacks have been written about elsewhere (Walsh 2016a, Neumann 2018. The advances of the WPSs from the pre-women's police station era were still vast and demonstrates the impact of external actors' collaboration with the women's police stations on victim services.…”

“…The waning of international involvement has left Nicaraguan women's movement advocates vulnerable to the political vagaries of the state. In 2014, the Ortega administration reformed and weakened the 2012 VAW law, and closed the WPSs in 2017 (Neumann 2018, Córdoba 2018. While these closures have not been officially decreed, domestic abuse cases are now routed to the Judicial Assistance Directorate of the National Police, a unit that lacks gender training (Córdoba 2018).…”

“…Nicaragua recently reversed most of its advances in policing for women and is now utilizing government-supported security forces to arrest, torture, and even murder citizens protesting and opposing recent government policies (Amnesty International 2018). As of 2017, the women's police stations closed due to a lack of government support and declining international funding (Neumann 2018, Córdoba 2018. The increasing consolidation of the Ortega regime that began to close itself to external influence in 2008 was an early warning sign of what now is a national crisis for citizen security -and completely undermined previous policing advances for women.…”