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Contents contributed and discussions participated by horowitzza

horowitzza

SAP Secretariat for Political Affairs - 0 views

  • The OAS has vast experience and expertise in conflict resolution and peace efforts. Since its inception, the Organization has been continuously called upon by its member states in times of crisis and has deployed dozens of peace missions of a different nature, ranging from short-term ad hoc and good offices assignments to longer term demobilization, disarmament and peace building missions.
  • Capitalizing on the demobilization and reintegration experience gained in the CIAV-OAS peace mission in Nicaragua (1990-1997), the OAS led an extremely successful reinsertion project
  • The OAS has continuously supported Haiti in its efforts to achieve a full-fledged and stable democracy, and durable peace.
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  • it was its purpose as well to establish an international presence in the country and serve as a deterrent to those who might attempt again to disrupt democrac
  • This conflict prevention and management program helped Guatemalans address ongoing social and political tensions by providing them with training on negotiation, mediation and conflict resolution skills.
  • Secretary General was asked to take urgent action to defuse a conflict in Nicaragua that threatened to upset the institutional order.
  • Experience in Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti and Nicaragua showed that the OAS played a decisive role in resolving the political and institutional crises in those countries, and took an active part in overcoming various situations that threatened democratic stability.
horowitzza

Revolutionary Drift: Power and Pragmatism in Ortega's Nicaragua - 0 views

  • Thirty-six years after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the entrenched Somoza dynasty, Nicaraguans still fill Plaza La Fe in Managua to celebrate Liberation Day festivities every July 19
  • supporters of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and President Daniel Ortega view the revolution as an ongoing process
  • The conditions for his return to power in 2007 were created by a pact he struck in 1999 with then-President Arnoldo Aleman of the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC).
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  • After being elected by only 38 percent of voters to a term that many expected to end in economic disaster, he was re-elected with more than 62 percent of the vote in 2011.
  • He owes his popularity to the success of popular social programs and improvements to the economy
  • his political opponents and some outside observers are highly critical of Ortega and the FSLN’s domination of Nicaragua’s political institutions.
  • corruption allegations in the 2008 municipal elections resulted in the loss of U.S. and European aid.
  • Opponents liken Ortega to Anastasio Somoza, calling him a corrupt dictator.
  • The resulting political imbalance has left the opposition with virtually no leverage in the legislature with regard to either policy or appointments.
  • Many presume that either Ortega will run for—and win—a fourth term, or that he will be succeeded by his wife, Rosario Murillo, or their son Laureano.
  • All of this has made for a particularly polarized political environment, much of it revolving around Ortega himsel
horowitzza

Nicaragua closing digital divide | Nicaragua Dispatch - 0 views

  • Despite the country’s gaping digital divide, the number of Facebook users in Nicaragua last year jumped from 150,000 to 700,000
  • Widespread accessibility to 3G cell phone technology makes it difficult to know just how many Nicaraguans are connecting to the Internet from hand-held devices, but estimates are that 10-30% of the Nicaragua’s 5.7 million people are now online.
  • The CINCO study estimates that Nicaragua has 579,000 Internet users with home connections, and another 250,000 who logon from Internet cafes, which are now found even the most remote corners of the country.
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  • In global terms, however, the Internet is gaining considerable ground in Nicaragua.
  • Still, the total number of Internet users in Nicaragua is unknown, in part due to government secrecy. The last government figures on Internet connectivity are from 2006, before the Sandinistas returned to power.
  • Prior to the elections last year, the presidential couple’s ruling party created more than 340 Facebook accounts to echo campaign slogans and Sandinista propaganda, the CINCO report found.
horowitzza

The Trouble With Measuring Peace in Latin America - 0 views

  • A new report ranks Colombia and Mexico as the least peaceful nations in Latin America -- however, this definition of "peace" may not accurately reflect the state of security in the region. 
  • The GPI's ranking system is somewhat perplexing, given that Central American countries with higher homicide rates -- namely, Honduras and El Salvador -- are considered more "peaceful" than Colombia and Mexico
  • Last year, both El Salvador and Honduras registered homicide rates higher than 60 per 100,000 people, more than double that of Colombia.
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  • the time murder rates began to decrease dramatically in cities such as in Tamaulipas and Ciudad Juarez, once hotspots for drug-related violence
horowitzza

Latin America Less Peaceful In 2015 Due To Rising Instability: Report - 0 views

  • Latin America emerged in 2015 as a less peaceful region than it was the year before, according to a new study on global peace released Wednesday.
  • The Global Peace Index, which gauges peace levels by measuring intensity of conflicts, pervasiveness of crime and violence and availability of weapons, issued its 2015 report Wednesday, showing that South America’s overall peace score dipped below the global average this year.
  • Latin America as a whole remained the most violent region in the world -- outside of conflict zones -- based on homicide rates and personal safety.
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  • Venezuela saw an increased risk of “violent demonstrations, violent crime and political instability as the economic crisis has deepened and anti-government sentiment has risen
  • Political instability and an increased likelihood of violent demonstrations accounted for Brazil’s low score as well
horowitzza

Latin Americans Need Security to Enjoy Peace and Prosperity - Borderzine - 0 views

  • Despite the decay of democratic institutions in Latin America, democracy is on the rise in the region because citizens are demanding better government.
  • Challenges are big for the Western Hemisphere, but the principal idea behind solving those challenges is that governments should act responsibly to resolve them
  • A prime example of this insecurity can be found in México, especially in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, where nearly 5,000 persons have been killed in a bloody drug war that has been raging for three years.
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  • On the other hand, it is known that the United States has openly announced it will try to help resolve the problems in Latin America
  • “We are working with the World Bank to help economies in Latin America and also we are working to uphold the concepts of democracy in this hemisphere,
  • “There are too many poor people in Latino America, but mainly this is because most of them can’t speak up to their governments.
horowitzza

In the Field: Notes from Nicaragua | United States Institute of Peace - 0 views

  • 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
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  • In the 1970s, however, the Somoza government’s National Guard found itself increasingly challenged by the insurrectionary Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). In 1978, violence escalated into civil war, which the Sandinistas and their allies quickly won.
  • When the Sandinistas took power in 1979, however, many Nicaraguans began to suspect that the new government was just another variation on the country’s authoritarian tradition.
  • The 1980s saw Nicaragua become a battlefield in the wider Cold War as East and West funded a war between the Sandinistas and the Contras (short for the Spanish word contra-revolucionarios--“counterrevolutionaries”).
  • In the past few years, allegations of electoral fraud, harassment of nongovernmental organizations and human rights activists, and efforts to amend the constitution to let the president run again in 2011, have tarnished Ortega’s democratic credentials.
horowitzza

Witness for Peace : Informal Economies: Reflections from a recent delegation ... - 0 views

  • In Nicaragua, I came to understand the reasons that poor people, sometimes accompanied by their children, sold newspapers, snacks, and washed windshields while standing in the swirl of traffic
  • observed the many ways that poor Nicaraguans struggled to support their families.
  • Clearly in both India and Nicaragua there are not enough job opportunities with fair wages, and poor people are unable to provide for their families by working in the formal economy
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  • my experiences in Nicaragua changed my perspective. I hope to continue my travels in the developing world, and I want some of those travels to be with Witness for Peace
horowitzza

Making Peace Is Political : Rejecting War, Nicaragua Now Relies on Democratic Support -... - 0 views

  • Significantly, the presidents not only continue to make strides in conflict resolution in Nicaragua, but also have started to place more emphasis on the other focus of civil war--El Salvador.
  • progress is the result of a combination of changes in the terms of the original equation in the quest for peace
  • The United States, though, has a legitimate concern to see the Sandinistas fulfill their pledge guaranteeing the safe return of the rebels and their families to Nicaragua from Honduras
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  • President Bush could go a long way toward restoring peace in Nicaragua, and U.S.-Nicaraguan relations, if he proposed to use his influence and support--together with other heads of state, the World Bank and various other international agencies--to help launch a resettlement program, in Nicaragua
  • Nicaraguans who have sought asylum abroad would be enticed to return home. However, such a project to restore our dignity as Nicaraguans can be possible only if the Sandinista regime takes a sincere decision to adopt democracy.
horowitzza

Silent War in Nicaragua: The New Politics of Violence | NACLA - 0 views

  • At 2:30 p.m. on June 15, 2000—more than ten years after the U.S.-sponsored Contra war officially ended in Nicaragua—a guerrilla unit of rearmed ex-Sandinistas and ex-Contras surrounded the small campesino home of Guadalupe Montenegro in the rural municipality of Siuna
  • Without saying a word, the men opened fire indiscriminately, killing Montenegro and all ten members of his family before burning the corpses and torching the house.
  • Perhaps nowhere else in Central America are the problems of demobilized soldiers, weapons left over from the Cold War and poverty more obvious than in the rural area of north-central Nicaragua—a region where the war that began in the 1980s has still not ended.
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  • "the Colombianization of the country,"
  • various residual groups of ex-combatants, some of whom are known by the government to be involved with international weapons and drug smuggling cartels, have started to take control of parts of the socially and economically isolated Caribbean region of Nicaragua.
  • The legacy of war and violence in Nicaragua is both heart-breaking and angering. In the recent history of the country, violence has always been answered with more violence.
  • According to testimonies from local sources, the rearmados are well-armed, expertly trained, equipped with modern methods of communication
  • In response to increased rebel activity in a gold and silver mining area called the "Mining Triangle" (Siuna, Bonanza and La Rosita), the Nicaraguan Army declared a military offensive
  • Initially dismissed by the government as "hotheads," "groups of delinquents" or "dogs of war" left over from the 1980s, the rebel groups appear to be anything but a rag-tag army.
  • During the U.S.-backed Somoza dynasty the state-sponsored repression of the poor by the National Guard was answered by the violence of the Sandinista Revolution, the triumph of which led to the violence of an eight-year-long, U.S.-funded war
horowitzza

Nicaragua suppresses opposition to ensure one-party election, critics say | World news ... - 0 views

  • A Nicaraguan government crackdown on free speech, opposition parties and foreign diplomats has been condemned as an attack on civil liberties to bolster one-party rule.
  • “any attempt to create conditions for the implementation of a single-party regime in which ideological diversity and political parties disappeared is harmful to the country”.
  • social programmes such as improved access to schools have helped maintain his popularity, but human rights groups have condemned the gradual concentration of power, and weakening of institutions.
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  • Ortega recently announced that international observers would not be invited to monitor the forthcoming elections.
  • “It seems like this is not the first case of intimidation against foreign researchers and investigators in Nicaragua. I am shocked by the experience”, said Rios, adding that the country’s press was also coming under pressure.
  • “Right now, we don’t have the conditions for free, transparent and competitive elections. We are not withdrawing from the elections, Mr Ortega is doing everything he can to expel the Coalition
  • But the opposition, like in Venezuela, is weak, according to Christine Wade, associate professor of political science and international studies at Washington College.
  • “The recent events look bad in an election season, but the opposition are poorly organised, bereft of ideas and spend too much time fighting amongst themselves.
horowitzza

Nicaragua | Country report | Freedom of the Press | 2012 - 0 views

  • 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
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  • A 2007 law established the right to access public information. However, Ortega’s administration is highly secretive, and he has given no press conferences since taking office in 2007, according to local reports.
  • media organizations were subject to threats and harassment by both governmental and private actors.
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    This article talks about Nicaragua's freedom of the press
horowitzza

Nicaragua's president makes a farce of democracy - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • where President Daniel Ortega, seeking a third consecutive five-year term in November, has just announced that his wife, Rosario Murillo, is his vice-presidential running mate.
  • Mr. Ortega first ruled Nicaragua for 11 years after the 1979 revolution, until his ouster in the country’s first genuinely democratic election
  • Having regained the presidency in 2006 through a series of corrupt political maneuvers, Mr. Ortega promptly engaged in more chicanery to ensure he would never have to leave office again
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  • In June, the pro-Ortega Supreme Court ousted the opposition’s likely presidential candidate, Eduardo Montealegre, from his own party in favor of a pro-Ortega opponent who had sued for control
  • Mr. Ortega’s allies in the National Assembly expelled 16 lawmakers (and 12 alternates) from Mr. Montealegre’s party who refused to accept the court-imposed new party leader.
  • Nicaragua’s backsliding, after a brief period of relatively transparent politics in the 1990s, has proceeded with nothing but mild verbal opposition from Washington
  • the State Department has also pronounced itself “gravely concerned” by the crushing of the political opposition.
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    President Daniel Ortega is threatening the democracy that has been reasonably sustained over the past couple decades in Nicaragua.
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