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.

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

The OAS has continuously supported Haiti in its efforts to achieve a full-fledged and stable democracy, and durable peace.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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