ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the issue of domestic violence in Nicaragua. The author first summarizes the country’s social and political context and provides an overview of available government data on gender-based violence. Since the mid-2000s, the Nicaraguan government has made symbolic commitments to women’s rights while at the same time normalizing and invisibilizing acts of violence against women through rollbacks to legislation that criminalized a wide spectrum of gender-based violence. Women’s efforts to hold the state accountable have been met with state repression and violence, particularly in the wake of a widespread citizen uprising against the government that began in April 2018. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of two worldwide crises with implications for gender inequality and violence against women: the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. The author discusses how these unfolding social, epidemiological, and environmental disasters pose new risks for the well-being of women and girls in Nicaragua.
