Scrapping elections that had already been emptied of any meaning removes the last formal mechanism through which power in Nicaragua might, however unlikely, have changed hands. Since 2018, the government has shut down over 5,500 civil society organizations, close to 80 per cent of what existed. The Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua, mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, has concluded that the government has weaponized every arm of the state and its abuses amount to crimes against humanity committed as deliberate policy. Having quit the Organization of American States in 2023, Nicaragua withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council and four other multilateral bodies in 2025. Two months after the government announced it was quitting, the Human Rights Council renewed the Group of Experts’ mandate for a further two years.