Global Issues

Nicaragua

• 25,803 reported cases of violence against women in 2010, encompassing 2,737 cases of sexual crimes including 1,276 cases of rape, 407 cases of rape of a minor, and 188 cases of attempted rape.

• Source and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor.

• Nicaraguan women and children subjected to sex trafficking within country as well as in neighboring countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, and the United States.

• Trafficking victims recruited in rural areas and coerced into prostitution.

• Managua, Granada, Esteli, and San Juan del Sur are destinations for foreign child sex tourists from the United States, Canada, and Western Europe.

• Some travel agencies are reportedly complicit in promoting child sex tourism.

• In Nicaragua, 63% of children of abused women had to repeat a school year and they left school on average 4 years earlier than other children.

• 17.5% of women report intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 13.1% of women report sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

• 19.2% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 11.4% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.

 

Sources: United Nations Development Fund for Women; UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data: Surveys by Country 2011; U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report; U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011