U.S. sanctions imposed in 2022 against Nicaragua’s mining industry were supposed to help combat a bloody wave of human rights abuses against local communities. But several years later, some aspects of the sanctions still aren’t being enforced, allowing mining companies to continue operations and even expand into new parts of the country. Numerous mines are still operating like normal, according to a new report from the Oakland Institute, a thinktank focused on social and environmental issues, contributing to escalating violence against Indigenous communities and the destruction of ancestral land. “The Biden administration talks a big game about using targeted sanctions to hold human rights violators accountable in Nicaragua, but the Treasury Department lets the worst of these actors off the hook,” said report co-author Josh Mayer, an Oakland Institute fellow, in a press release. The Treasury Department announced sanctions against state-owned mining company Empresa Nicaragüense de Minas (ENIMIENAS) in June 2022, saying it was “using gold revenue to continue to oppress the people of Nicaragua.” A few months later, President Biden used executive order 14088 to expand the sanctions to all individuals and companies operating in Nicaragua’s gold sector. In theory, that meant anyone mining in Nicaragua was blocked from accessing financial entities in the U.S., including including properties, capital and banking services. But sanctions have been historically hard to enforce and ineffective as a foreign policy tool. Last year, the U.S. was the country’s largest gold importer, bringing in around $465 million between January 2023 and July 2023, according…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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