Costa Rica, June 13, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Nicaragua announced Thursday it was withdrawing from the United Nations refugee agency, after alleging that the organization had made "biased" statements about Nicaraguans seeking refuge in other countries.

"We hereby announce our sovereign decision to immediately withdraw from the UN refugee agency UNHCR," read a letter signed by Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Valdrack Jaentschke and addressed to the agency's chief Filippo Grandi.

UNHCR called on the international community last month to step up to help thousands of Nicaraguans arriving in Costa Rica after fleeing poverty and repression in their country.

The agency said that a sharp reduction in its own funding and that of its partners had left many many Nicaraguan refugees without protection.

The foreign minister's letter, published by pro-government media, slammed UNHCR and accused it of becoming "an instrument of manipulation, double standards and interference in the internal affairs of states."

Last month, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's government said it was pulling out of UNESCO after the UN cultural agency bestowed its annual press prize on a venerable Nicaraguan newspaper whose staff were forced into exile.

The Central American country has also withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, the International Organization for Migration and the International Labour Organization over criticism of its human rights record.

Ortega, the 79-year-old who toppled a US-backed dictatorship in 1979 and then led the country for a decade, has shown increasingly authoritarian tendencies since returning to power in 2007.

He has seized control of all branches of government and shut down thousands of NGOs since major anti-government protests in 2018, which he branded a US-backed coup bid.