Nicaragua is a country in Central America bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west, with maritime boundaries shared with El Salvador and Colombia. Nicaragua is a country of origin of economic migrants and is largely a transit country for asylum seekers and refugees moving towards the North in mixed migratory flows. Nicaragua hosts a small number of refugees, most of whom are Salvadorans and Hondurans. 

Nicaragua ratified the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol in 1980. The Nicaraguan national legal framework on asylum is one of the most advanced in the region. The Law on Refugee Protection incorporated the extended refugee definition of the 1984 Cartagena Declaration. Gender-based persecution is recognized as a ground for recognition of refugee status. In 2008, the National Assembly enacted Law No. 655 (Law on Refugee Protection), incorporating both the 1951 refugee definition and the expanded criteria of the 1984 Cartagena Declaration into domestic statute, and creating an inter-institutional National Refugee Commission charged with status determination and provisional documentation. Complementing this framework, Migration Law No. 761 of 2011 consolidated entry, stay and removal provisions for all non-nationals, including asylum-seekers, and reinforced protections against return where a well-founded fear of persecution exists.