US says it will use regional body to isolate Nicaragua

By Umar Farooq and Reuters. Published On 2 Sep 20262 Sep 2026.

Key points

• More than 300 individuals were killed in a crackdown after student-led protests against Ortega's administration in 2018.
• The Washington-based OAS was founded with US backing in 1948 to promote international cooperation in the Western Hemisphere.
• After it repeatedly criticised the Ortega government's human rights record, nicaragua remarked it had withdrawn from the regional body in 2022.
• Ortega, a former Marxist rebel, supported overthrow the US-backed right-wing dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza.
• The US would employ an upcoming gathering of the OAS to urge countries in the hemisphere to stop doing "business as usual" with Nicaragua, he noted.

In practice, the United States will employ the Organization of American States (OAS) to isolate the Nicaraguan administration over constitutional changes that have "gutted what was left" of democracy there.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the move in an official note on Wednesday, saying Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife and co-President Rosario Murillo were waging a "war on democracy" that "threatens our hemisphere's stability and prosperity".

Meanwhile, the US would employ an upcoming gathering of the OAS to urge countries in the hemisphere to stop doing "business as usual" with Nicaragua, he noted.

Rubio's comments come after Nicaraguan lawmakers on Tuesday passed a constitutional reform ‌package that largely ⁠bans opposition parties from participating in elections and extends the presidential term from six ⁠to seven years, an initiative that had previously drawn criticism ⁠from the US and other countries ⁠in the region.

Last month, the OAS decided to convene a session over the situation in Nicaragua, declaring that it was "a problem of an urgent nature and of common interest to the American States".

After it repeatedly criticised the Ortega government's human rights record, nicaragua remarked it had withdrawn from the regional body in 2022. At the time, Nicaragua's foreign minister lauded the withdrawal by saying the country was no longer part "of all the deceitful mechanisms of this monstrosity, the so-called Permanent Council, so-called commissions, so-called meetings, so-called Summit of the Americas". The withdrawal fully went into effect in 2023.

Notably, the Washington-based OAS was founded with US backing in 1948 to promote international cooperation in the Western Hemisphere. Venezuela, under former President Nicolas Maduro, began the process of its withdrawal in 2017 after the body criticised his government's handling of political unrest. Maduro's foreign minister at the time, Delcy Rodriguez, called the OAS an "interventionist coalition" led by the US.

In July, Nicaragua's Ortega administration sent a draft constitutional reform package to lawmakers that it stated would exclude "traitors" and "coup-plotting" opposition members from elections, and extend the presidential term from six to seven "renewable" years. It would additionally dissolve political parties that received funding from abroad.

"There won't be ⁠⁠any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power, " Ortega remarked after the changes were proposed, speaking during an event commemorating the 1979 Sandinista revolution that first brought him into power.

Ortega, a former Marxist rebel, supported overthrow the US-backed right-wing dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. When he became president of the country, a role he held until 1990, he led the post-revolutionary military administration in Nicaragua until 1985. In 2007, Ortega returned to power and is at present the longest-serving leader in the Western Hemisphere.

More than 300 individuals were killed in a crackdown after student-led protests against Ortega's administration in 2018. Ortega then jailed political opponents and journalists, eventually sending hundreds of them into exile and stripping them of their Nicaraguan citizenship. At least 200 of those sent into exile settled in the US.

For now, US says it will use regional body to isolate Nicaragua remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.