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NICARAGUA:
Young People Exiled by Poverty
By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA (IPS) - If they could, about
60 percent of Nicaraguans under 30 would go
to live abroad, according to studies on
migration, which find that the country's
chronic poverty is the main reason for
wanting to migrate.
Between 1990 and 2005, more than 800,000
Nicaraguans left the country, and 400,000
more could migrate by 2010, according to the
United Nations Development Programme's Human
Development Report 2009, devoted this year
to the topic of migration. But local
projections put that figure even higher.
The report, "Overcoming Barriers: Human
Mobility and Development", adds the caveat
that its estimates for 2010 of migration for
economic reasons are based on long-term
trends, and may not exactly predict the
effects of unexpected short-term
fluctuations like the ongoing global
economic crisis.
According to Bayardo Izabá, the head of the
non-governmental Nicaraguan Human Rights
Centre (CENIDH), the statistics in the UNDP
report are an underestimate. Although the
report was released this month, it is based
on surveys carried out by the Economic
Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean (ECLAC) in 2007.
"Over one million people have left the
country because of poverty," Ibaza told IPS.
"No one leaves the country for any other
reason, and there are another million or
more young people who want to migrate."
CENIDH publishes an annual report on the
general situation in Nicaragua, including
the number of people who migrated and those
who were deported back to the country.
The Human Development Report indicates that
Nicaraguans living abroad represent 13
percent of the country's population, which
was 5.5 million in 2007. Nicaragua is ranked
124th out of 182 countries in terms of its
human development index, a measure of a
country's success in providing citizens with
a long, healthy life, education and decent
living standards.
Nicaragua has the lowest human development
index in Central America and the second
lowest in Latin America after Haiti. The
UNDP puts the poverty rate in Nicaragua at
48 percent, and extreme poverty at 17
percent.
The head of the non-governmental Permanent
Commission on Human Rights, Marcos Carmona,
told IPS that people migrate for two main
reasons: chronic poverty that was aggravated
by the 1979-1990 civil war, and government
neglect because the administration's
economic policies are focused on meeting
financial obligations to multilateral
lenders.
The overthrow of the four-decade Somoza
family dictatorship in 1979 by the leftist
Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)
was followed by the counter-revolutionary
(Contra) attacks by former members of the
Somoza armed forces and other opponents of
the Sandinistas, financed and equipped by
the United States. After 1990, right-wing
governments implemented neoliberal
free-market economic policies.
Carmona said Nicaragua's economic troubles
have been accentuated by the global crisis
that originated in the United States last
year, and by a halt to international aid as
a result of allegations of electoral fraud
in 2008.
The FSLN, which returned to the government
in January 2007, was accused of fraud in the
2008 municipal elections by opposition
parties and civil society, religious and
economic groups. As a result, major donors
like the United States and European
countries stopped sending aid, which had
amounted to some 500 million dollars a year.
This brought about lower levels of funding
for social projects, a contraction of the
economy and no employment growth in the
public and private sectors.
"Young people, our greatest human capital
and the driving force in any economy, want
to migrate, which is a clear sign that we
are failing as a society. They have lost
confidence in their future and in the
ability of their country's leaders to
provide answers to their needs," said
Carmona.
Figures from the state Youth Secretariat and
the Nicaraguan Institute of Information for
Development indicate that 69.9 percent of
the country's 5.7 million people (according
to 2009 estimates) are under 30.
In a 2007 study by the Nicaraguan Civil
Society Network for Migration, 60 percent of
respondents under 30 said they would like to
leave the country in search of employment
and opportunities for personal growth.
The official unemployment rate in Nicaragua
is under nine percent, but private sources
put it as high as 14 percent.
Companies in the industrial free zone are
the main source of employment, but more than
30,000 people have lost their jobs there in
the last two years.
Fifty-five percent of the economically
active population works in the informal
economy, scraping a living as street vendors
or in different microbusinesses. Nicaragua's
per capita GDP is the lowest in Central
America, at 2,570 dollars, according to the
UNDP. A survey by the M&R Consultores
polling firm found that 59.4 percent of
Nicaraguans between 16 and 55 were
considering leaving the country because of
economic difficulties.
This means that approximately one-and-a-half
million people would be willing to cross
Nicaragua's borders to seek better
opportunities abroad.
In 2007, Nicaraguans working abroad sent
home 740 million dollars in remittances,
equivalent to 12.1 percent of GDP, according
to the Human Development Report.
The UNDP report also analysed social and
economic characteristics and educational
achievements among Nicaraguan migrants.
It found that 40.7 percent of migrants had
been to primary school, 41.1 percent had
studied at secondary or technical schools,
and 18.1 percent had some higher education.
These figures are similar to those provided
by other international studies, such as the
World Bank's International Migration,
Remittances and the Brain Drain report of
late 2005.
The World Bank study estimates that nearly
30 percent of those who leave the country
are skilled workers or professionals, and 67
percent are under 29 years old.
Mario Quintana, a member of the board of
Coordinadora Civil, an NGO which observes
social indicators and analyses the
socio-economic situation in the country,
told IPS that migration is rising in
response to a lack of public policies to
foment job creation.
"There isn't a single report, official or
private, that predicts economic improvement
in the country in the short or medium term.
On the contrary, everyone expects the local
financial crisis to get worse, and that at
least another 100,000 people a year will
fall into poverty," said Quintana.
"What will all these people do? The same
thing that over one million have already
done: leave their homeland," he said. |
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