|
Home I Who We Are I What We Do I Where We Work I News I Projects I Contact Us I Donate Now |
|
|
A beautiful land of lakes and volcanoes with a rich cultural heritage, Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in Latin America and has a long history of exploitation, dictatorship and civil war. The 1979 revolution was followed by almost a decade of bitter conflict and a devastating trade embargo which claimed the lives of over 30,000 and brought the economy to the point of collapse. Since the end of the war in 1990, significant progress has been made towards national reconciliation, but subsequent corruption and disputes over land ownership have caused lingering unrest. Nicaragua is also a country that has been repeatedly devastated by natural disasters, including the Managua earthquake of 1972 which killed an estimated 10,000 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998 which killed at least 3,500. Many other disasters have not attracted so much international attention as these, and the country is constantly at risk from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, mudslides, and drought. Not only have the death tolls, mass displacements and human suffering been catastrophic, but the economic effects of these disasters have been profound and long-lasting. The economy of Nicaragua has been based on a limited range of exports, resulting in dependency, vulnerability to adverse market conditions and concentration of resources and power into the hands of the wealthy elite. The growth and decline of export crops such as cotton consolidated land into huge plantations, dispossessing small farmers, depleting the land of nutrients and contaminating it with pesticides. The crisis in the global coffee market has caused enormous hardship, particularly amongst the many landless coffee workers whose entire livelihoods have been tied to the plantations. |
|
|
Key statistics
source: UNDP, 2004 |
 |