Nicaragua Quits Central American Parliament After OAS Pressure

Nicaragua has announced its withdrawal from the Central American Parliament, or PARLACEN, opening another break with a regional institution as Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo’s government comes under sustained diplomatic pressure.

Reuters reports that Nicaragua’s Foreign Ministry denounced the 1987 treaty establishing the six-country parliament and said the decision took immediate effect in the full exercise of national sovereignty.

The move came one day after the Organization of American States approved a resolution calling on Managua to free political prisoners and restore civil liberties. Nicaragua left the OAS in 2023, accusing it of serving U.S. interventionism, and in 2025 announced its departure from the U.N. Human Rights Council after another critical report.

Sovereignty and accountability

The dispute contains two truths that should not be collapsed into one another. Washington has a long history of intervention in Nicaragua and across Central America, while the Ortega-Murillo government also faces serious accusations over repression and the narrowing of political space. Pamphlets’ recent Americas democracy snapshot argued for judging regional politics without granting Washington a monopoly on the language of democracy.

For the Nicaraguan state, withdrawal reduces the number of regional bodies able to exert institutional pressure. For workers and opposition forces inside the country, however, the practical question is not whether the OAS is benevolent; it is whether rights, organization and political participation can be protected without becoming instruments in a geopolitical contest.

A deeper regional fracture

Central American integration was built on the promise that small states could gain room to maneuver collectively. Each institutional rupture weakens that capacity. The region is left between two bad tendencies: external powers using rights language selectively, and governments invoking sovereignty as an answer to every domestic criticism.

Source: Reuters. Photo: Fernanda LeMarie / Cancillería del Ecuador, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.