The Central American Parliament, known as Parlacen, was established in 1987 as a six-country body intended to promote human rights and democracy in Central America. On Friday, the Organisation of American States passed a resolution calling on Nicaragua to restore civil rights and release political prisoners.
On Saturday, Nicaragua’s Foreign Ministry announced that the country would withdraw from Parlacen. The government said the decision would take effect immediately.
Nicaragua officially communicated to Guatemala that it was denouncing the Constituent Treaty of the Central American Parliament with immediate effect. The notification went to Guatemala’s Ministry of Foreign Relations, because Guatemala is the depositary country for the treaty signed in 1987, and was also sent to Parlacen’s Board of Directors.
The government described the decision as being taken ‘in the full exercise of its sovereignty’. It called the move ‘the latest in a series of withdrawals from regional and international organisations that Nicaragua has undertaken’.
Those earlier departures included Nicaragua’s exit from the OAS in 2023 and its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2025, amid criticism of the country’s human rights record. The latest decision deepens Nicaragua’s international isolation.
The government is led by President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, his spouse. Ortega has been accused of using the state against critics and dissidents through imprisonment, torture and exile. The Ortega-Murillo government has accused international groups of serving as vehicles for outside intervention, while consolidating power.
Parlacen had been one of the regional forums most favourable to the Ortega-Murillo government. The Sandinista movement had promoted the addition of China and Russia as observer states in the parliament.
Nicaragua also denounced the constitutive convention of the Central American Court of Justice in March 2025. El Salvador began its own process to leave Parlacen in 2025 after its Legislative Assembly approved a constitutional reform removing references to the body from articles 80 and 133 of the Constitution. Parlacen’s decisions are not binding.
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