ABSTRACT
Look around the streets of Nicaragua some three years into the FSLN-led Government of Reconciliation and National Unity (GRUN) that entered office in January 2007 and you will witness something unseen in a decade: children playing and reclaiming a childhood. While still an impoverished nation, Nicaragua’s historically dispossessed are recapturing their dignity. As free health care and basic education have been restored and over 23,500 children in risk situations, including street and labouring children, became integrated in the education system between 2007 and 2010 (GRUN 2011), a survey by the International Foundation for Global Economic Challenge (FIDEG 2010) states that between 2005 and 2010, poverty has been reduced from 48.3% to 44.7%, extreme poverty from 17.2% to 9.7% and extreme rural poverty from 30.5% to 18.2%. Most significantly, perhaps, as will further be elaborated below, the nation was declared illiteracy-free in July 2009 (UNESCO et al. 2009). These achievements have to be analysed in relation to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our AmericaPeoples’ Trade Agreement (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra Ame´ricaTratado de Comercio de los Pueblos, ALBATCP), which Nicaragua joined as a full member in 2007.
