The UN Human Rights Expert Group for Nicaragua (GHREN) announced on Monday a sentenced the government’s withdrawal of licenses from numerous lawyers and notaries.
According to those affected, there was neither a notification nor a legal basis nor an official reason for the revocation. Many did not know their driver’s license had been revoked until they appeared in court or attempted to file legal documents.
The GHREN warned that this measure would “effectively wipe out” a crucial part of the legal profession in Nicaragua, thereby depriving citizens of the right to legal defense. GHREN member Reed Brody explained:
The quiet purge of the legal profession is another nail in the coffin for the independence of the judiciary in Nicaragua: first they took the judges, now they are taking the lawyers. International standards are clear: no one may be excluded from practicing law without a fair hearing before an independent body. There was no hearing here, no independent panel – just a delete button.
Brody said that “at least hundreds, if not thousands of lawyers” would be affected by the move.
Affected are former judicial officials and exiled lawyers, former members of the regime Sandinista Partyand others who have no clear affiliation. Attacks like these are a constant finding of the GHREN, as expert member Ariela Peralta says:
Lawyers have been among the victims of political persecution in Nicaragua since 2018. They were threatened, harassed, imprisoned and exiled. They were systematically denied access to their clients – and now also to the practice of their profession itself.
Juan Diego Barberena, a lawyer and human rights defender exiled in Costa Rica, was among those whose accreditation was revoked. In a current one interviewBarberena described the move as a “dictatorship… that seeks to prevent lawyers, experts and academics from participating in the future of the country’s institutions. This is a means of exercising totalitarian control over the legal profession.”
The expert report notes an erosion of the legal profession that began in 2023 with arbitrariness and permanence suspension by at least 25 lawyers. Some were former political prisoners, others were part of a group whose citizenship was revoked after they were accused of being “traitors”.
In addition, the police took over the Supreme Court in October 2023, leading to the expulsion of many judicial officials. The government consolidated its control over the judiciary Constitutional reforms in 2025 and drew criticism from human rights groups.
The GHREN was founded by the General Assembly in March 2022 Decision 49/3followed by Resolution 52/2 And A/HRC/RES/58/18 which extended the group’s mandate for two years each. The UN Human Rights Council has set up a group of three human rights experts to conduct an independent investigation into all alleged violations since April 2018. The GHREN did this released numerous reports on his results.
