On November 2, 2023, the UN General Assembly vote was decisively in favor of denouncing the US economic embargo against Cuba for a third year, following the foreign minister’s plea to “let Cuba live without the blockade.”
The resolution was approved by 187 votes in favor, tying the record for support for the Caribbean Island nation set by the 193-member General Assembly. Israel and the United States abstained. Moldova, Venezuela, and Somalia did not cast ballots.
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The “yes” vote increased from 185 in the previous year to 184 in 2021, where it tied the vote of 187 in 2019.
Bruno Rodriguez, the foreign minister of Cuba, pleaded with the assembly to accept the resolution and uphold “reason and justice,” the UN Charter, and international law prior to the vote.
It is “a crime of genocide” and “an act of economic warfare during times of peace,” he claimed, adding that the US embargo has implemented “the most cruel and long-lasting unilateral coercive measures that have ever been applied against any country.”
According to Rodriguez, the US wants to topple the regime, undermine Cuba’s economy, and leave its people destitute and starving.
Resolutions passed by the General Assembly are not legally enforceable and are only a reflection of global opinion. However, the vote has provided Cuba with an annual platform to highlight the US’s decades-long efforts to isolate the Caribbean nation.
Following Fidel Castro’s revolution and the nationalization of US individuals’ and corporations’ property, an embargo was put in place in 1960. After two years, it was reinforced.
In July 2016, ties between President Barack Obama and then-Cuban President Raul Castro were formally restored, and the US abstained from voting on the resolution demanding the lifting of the embargo for the first time. However, Donald Trump, Obama’s successor, harshly criticized Cuba for its record on human rights, and the US once more voted against the resolution in 2017.
In the final days of the Trump administration, Rodriguez claimed, new penalties were imposed, and he charged that the Biden administration was stepping up its efforts “to harass Cuba in the economic and financial sectors.”
According to some observers, Cuba is currently experiencing its worst economic crisis since the Cuban Revolution in 1959. The island would benefit from more imports of a variety of items, but it’s generally believed that the Cuban government lacks the resources to make the purchases.
However, Cuba is also undergoing a period of change as small and medium-sized private businesses open up. In Cuba, almost 8,000 new businesses have been established since September 2021, when small businesses were made legal.
Rodriguez stated that nobody else has experienced “such systematic and long-lasting hostility from a superpower, but Cuba will continue to renew itself, and to build a sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous and sustainable nation.”
Following the vote, US Deputy Ambassador Paul Folmsbee told the assembly that its sanctions remain in place and that they are “one set of tools in our broader effort toward Cuba to advance democracy and promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
He said that more than 1,000 political prisoners are being held in Cuba today than at any other time in the country’s recent history. Following historic protests on July 11, 2021, when members of civil society, including human rights activists and minors, exercised their rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, almost 700 people were taken into custody.
Folmsbee noted, “We share the Cuban people’s dream of democracy in Cuba and join international partners in calling for the Cuban government to immediately release all those unjustly detained.” He called on Cuba to comply with the UN Human Rights Council’s requests to dispatch experts to the nation to assess its compliance with rights such as freedom of expression, religion, and peaceful assembly.
He concluded by urging that the General Assembly should press the Cuban government, to which the assembly chamber occasionally erupted in jeers, “to adhere to its human rights obligations and listen to the Cuban people and their aspirations to determine their own future.”
