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Antigua and Barbuda is a multiparty, parliamentary democracy with a population of approximately 100,000.

There were human rights problems in some areas, including excessive use of force by police, poor prison conditions, some limits on press freedom, societal discrimination and violence against women, sexual abuse of children, and discrimination against homosexuality.

There were no reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings.

Earlier this year, a coalition of farmers turned in 28,000 signatures opposing the law that grants concession for the project.

The report argues that the delayed $50 billion canal deal breaches Nicaragua’s own constitution and denies its people’s rights to property, adequate housing, water and food. The report also expressed concerns over Cocibolca Lake, which it said is the “main fresh water reserve for all of Central America.” The construction of a massive waterway “will surely affect the 80,000 people who use the lake’s water,” the report stated, “and the 40 different varieties of fish living in it.”

The canal would also uproot some 120,000 farmers, according to the report, who have no means of relocating and have received insufficient compensation from the government.

Courts are prone to corruption and manipulation by organised crime groups, drug cartels and a democratic socialist political party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which allegedly accepts bribes from drug traffickers for campaign financing in return for judicial favours (InSightCrime, July 2014).

Rampant corruption within Nicaragua's political circles impairs the functioning of state institutions and limits foreign investment. International companies report widespread favouritism and impunity among public officials.

Courts are prone to corruption and manipulation by organised crime groups, drug cartels and a democratic socialist political party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which allegedly accepts bribes from drug traffickers for campaign financing in return for judicial favours (InSightCrime, July 2014).

MEXICO CITY — Juan García relinquished his cellphone, walked through two metal detectors, registered with a uniformed soldier — and then finally entered Mexico’s only legal gun store.

To anyone familiar with the 49,762 licensed gun dealers in the United States, or the 7,261 gun-selling pawn shops, the place looked less like a store than a government office. Customers waited on metal chairs near a fish tank to be called up to a window to submit piles of paperwork. The guns hung in drab display cases as if for decoration, with not a single sales clerk offering assistance.

The goal of the military-run shop seemed to be to discourage people from buying weapons, and even gun lovers like Mr. García, 45, a regular at a local shooting club, said that was how it should be. “If you want to stop someone who gets mad at their wife or the world from running out and buying a gun and killing everyone, you have to make it hard,” said Mr. García, who waited two months for the approval to buy a .38-caliber pistol. “It’s the only way to make people think.”

o what do you do if you are the president of the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and you’re facing the worst drought since 1976? Why, you buy Russian fighter jets at $30 million a pop, and work out a secretive deal to trade private land and the patrimony of your citizens to a Chinese canal-building company, of course.

When I worked for the Bush administration, I met the newly-elected Ortega in Granada, Nicaragua, at an event he surely had mixed feelings about. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had helped the government of Nicaragua design and implement a land reform program that put property titles into the hands of Nicaraguan citizens. Nicaraguans loved it,

Ortega is now serving his second term.

The constitution provides for freedom of the press, but in practice the government acts to restrict it.

Ortega has claimed that right-wing business magnates retain a stranglehold on the media, but his own family, party, and supporters have recently taken control of many outlets, especially television and radio stations.

Criminal libel laws are used frequently against journalists and news outlets

5,966,798 (July 2016 est.)

mestizo (mixed Amerindian and white) 69%, white 17%, black 9%, Amerindian 5%

Despite being one of the poorest countries in Latin America, Nicaragua has improved its access to potable water and sanitation and has ameliorated its life expectancy, infant and child mortality, and immunization rates. However, income distribution is very uneven, and the poor, agriculturalists, and indigenous people continue to have less access to healthcare services. Nicaragua's total fertility rate has fallen from around 6 children per woman in 1980 to just above replacement level today, but the high birth rate among adolescents perpetuates a cycle of poverty and low educational attainment. Nicaraguans emigrate primarily to Costa Rica and to a lesser extent the United States. Nicaraguan men have been migrating seasonally to Costa Rica to harvest bananas and coffee since the early 20th century. Political turmoil, civil war, and natural disasters from the 1970s through the 1990s dramatically increased the flow of refugees and permanent migrants seeking jobs, higher wages, and better social and healthcare benefits. Since 2000, Nicaraguan emigration to Costa Rica has slowed and stabilized. Today roughly 300,000 Nicaraguans are permanent residents of Costa Rica - about 75% of the foreign population - and thousands more migrate seasonally for work, many illegally.

Nicaragua armed with audio and video recorders and a plan to capture the human dimension of the country’s conflict

In a country where the past is intensely alive, we realized we needed to learn some history before we set off.

For much of the 20th century, Nicaragua was subjected to dictatorial regimes under the control of the influential Somoza family

Construction of Nicaragua Canal Threatens Indigenous Lives and Livelihoods

In June 2013, Nicaraguan officials approved a $50 billion (US) deal with a Hong Kong firm to oversee the construction of a 278-kilometer long canal. The HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company’s proposed project would attempt to link the Pacific to the Caribbean, allowing the passage of container ships
too large for passage through the Panama Canal.

The construction of the canal promises environmental abuses and human rights violations as the proposed route cuts through the land of multiple Indigenous territories on Nicara- gua’s coasts and within its mainland. Thousands of people are expected to be impacted with many being forcibly displaced, primarily including the Kriol and Indigenous Rama people,
in a clear violation of Indigenous autonomy laws in Nicaragua and international human rights documents.

President Daniel Ortega can expect the country's presidential and legislative election to give him a third consecutive 5-year term as he enjoys broad support and appears to have secured the other avenues to victory.

First Lady Rosario Murillo already has a prominent role in the government. The BBC reports that she is widely seen as sharing power with her husband, and critics accuse the first couple of running Nicaragua like a personal fiefdom.

August showed that 65 per cent of those surveyed planned to vote for Ortega's FSLN, compared with just 13 per cent for the opposition.

Nicaragua is a multiparty constitutional republic, but in recent years political power has become concentrated in a single party, with an increasingly authoritarian executive branch exercising significant control over the legislative, judicial, and electoral branches. In 2011 the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) announced the re-election of President Daniel Ortega Saavedra of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in elections that international and domestic observers characterized as seriously flawed

he principal human rights abuses were restrictions on citizens’ right to vote; obstacles to freedom of speech and press, including government intimidation and harassment of journalists and independent media

reports the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, many during confrontations with illegal armed groups in the northern part of the country

Nicaragua's first lady the face of government

Her husband, Daniel Ortega, is president, but as chief of communications, Murillo is the voice and the other face of the government. At border crossings and on roadside billboards throughout the country, "Daniel and Rosario" are pictured side-by-side.

She speaks on behalf of her husband's government in a stream of rhetoric that blends socialism, New Age spirituality and Catholicism, but brooks no criticism.

Nicaragua joins “CARICOM” family

has formally welcomed Nicaragua into its “family” urging it to work with the region in order to make a difference on the global stage.

CARICOM Secretary General Irwin LaRocque, accepting the credentials of Valdrack L. Jaentschke as Nicaragua’s Ambassador to CARICOM, said that small states working together could make a difference.

Ortega vs. the Contras: Nicaragua Endures an ’80s Revival

Tyson and his men are contras — yes, like the ones from the 1980s who received stealth funding during the Reagan administration to topple Mr. Ortega’s leftist Sandinista government.

That war ended more than 25 years ago, when Mr. Ortega lost at the polls. But since being re-elected in 2006, Mr. Ortega has come to rule over this Central American nation in sweeping fashion.

Political Crisis Looms in Nicaragua in Run-Up to Elections

The seventh consecutive nomination of Daniel Ortega as the governing party’s candidate to the presidency in Nicaragua, and the withdrawal from the race of a large part of the opposition, alleging lack of guarantees for genuine elections, has brought about the country’s worst political crisis since the end of the civil war in 1990.

If he wins his term of office will be extended to 2021, by which time he will have served a record breaking 19 years, longer even than that of former dictator Anastasio Somoza García whoruled the country for over 16 years.

it is already cheaper than China for many industries serving the American market.

while Mexico’s economy is far from trouble free, its growth easily outpaced the giants of the hemisphere — the United States, Canada and Brazil — in 2011 and 2012, according to International Monetary Fund data, making the country more attractive to fortune seekers worldwide.

residency requests had grown by 10 percent since November, when a new law meant to streamline the process took effect. And they are coming from nearly everywhere.

The government of Antigua and Barbuda took steps in 2012 to reform the country’s financial regulatory environment in the aftermath of the discovery of a $7 billion dollar Ponzi scheme, which had exposed deep ties between foreign businesses and the government

Antigua and Barbuda, a member of the Commonwealth, gained its independence from Britain in 1981.

In the 2004 elections, the opposition United Progressive Party (UPP), led by Baldwin Spencer, defeated Prime Minister Lester Bird and the ruling Antigua Labour Party (ALP), ending the Bird political dynasty that had governed the country since 1976.