Nicaragua denounces the 1987 Parlacen treaty and says the exit is immediate

Nicaragua said on Saturday that it was leaving the Central American Parliament with immediate effect. The foreign ministry said it had decided to denounce the 1987 treaty that created the six-country body, "in the full exercise of its sovereignty". The treaty was signed in Guatemala on 2 October 1987. The statement, circulated to the press on Saturday afternoon, said the denunciation would take effect at once. The government did not answer a request for further comment, Reuters reported from Mexico City.

The step came a day after the Organization of American States adopted a resolution calling on Managua to free political prisoners and restore civil liberties. Reuters' Spanish service reported that OAS foreign ministers approved the text by general consensus on Friday, that no Central American country voted against it, and that the resolution also asked for elections open to all political forces. Nicaragua left the OAS in 2023, arguing that the body had become a tool of US intervention.

A short list of exits

Parlacen is the latest name on a list Managua has been cutting. In 2025 the government said it would withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council after a UN report asked other states to address violations inside Nicaragua. Last July, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo said the country would no longer hold elections in which, in their wording, "coup plotters" took part. That announcement removed the ordinary route by which an opposition could return to the National Assembly.

The political crisis dates to April 2018, when protests were put down by police. Reuters recalled the toll cited since then: more than 350 deaths, about 2,000 injuries, and thousands of detentions and departures. Those figures are the baseline against which the Friday OAS text was written. The Saturday denunciation does not answer the text. It removes Nicaragua from the only regional parliament that still seated it.

What Parlacen actually is

The Central American Parliament was built as part of the Esquipulas process that ended the wars of the 1980s. Its members have been Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic. It sits in Guatemala City. It cannot pass binding law in member states. Its value has been diplomatic: a room in which Central American deputies still meet, and a treaty obligation that is awkward to break in public.

Denouncing the constitutive treaty is a formal act, not a walkout from a session. Immediate effect, as Managua states it, means Nicaraguan deputies lose their mandate in that chamber now, and the country leaves the budget and the rules that come with the 1987 text. Whether Guatemala, as depositary, treats the denunciation as valid on Saturday's date is a question the foreign ministry statement does not settle. Other members have not, in the wires available on Sunday, said they accept or reject the move.

Isolation with a calendar

The sequence is tight enough to read without inference. Friday: an OAS resolution, adopted without a Central American vote against it, asks for prisoners to be freed and liberties restored. Saturday: Managua denounces the Parlacen treaty and says the exit is immediate. The country is already outside the OAS and has said it is leaving the Human Rights Council. It has also said it will not hold competitive elections.

What remains is bilateral. Trade, migration and security with Costa Rica, Honduras and the United States do not run through Parlacen. The cost of leaving is mostly the loss of a forum and the signal to the other five members. The gain, for Ortega and Murillo, is one less treaty body that can put Nicaragua on an agenda. The Friday resolution shows that agenda has moved to the OAS even without Nicaragua in the room.