Felix Maradiaga

Short vita

Félix Maradiaga is a Nicaraguan academic, human rights defender, and former presidential candidate. In 2021, he was arbitrarily jailed by the Ortega regime, where he spent 21 months in solitary confinement before being released and stripped of his citizenship. He is currently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and received both the 2023 Sergei Magnitsky Award for Outstanding Democratic Opposition and the Geneva Summit Courage Award.

He is Professor of Global Democracy at the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins University, and Director of the World Liberty Congress Academy, which trains pro-democracy dissidents from more than 60 countries. He also leads the Global Knowledge Network on Authoritarianism, a platform linking activists and scholars to counter authoritarian tactics. In addition, he serves as a Trustee of Freedom House and President of the Red Liberal de América Latina, the region’s largest liberal political network.