General Assembly weighs US embargo against Cuba ahead of 34th vote

This article is published in association with United Nations.

The General Assembly opened its annual debate on the US economic embargo against Cuba on Tuesday. On Wednesday, 28 October, Member States will vote for the 34th time on a resolution calling for it to end.

Every year at around this time, the assembly – where each of the UN’s 193 Member States has one vote – takes up the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”.

And every year, whatever the political climate, the issue generates plenty of diplomatic heat. The debate usually spills over two days as countries and regional groups take the floor to explain their positions.

A 33-vote record

The assembly has called for an end to the embargo, first imposed in 1960, on 33 previous occasions.

Support has grown markedly since the first vote in 1992, when 59 countries backed the resolution, three opposed it, 71 abstained and 46 did not vote.

It peaked at 191 votes in favour in 2015, 2016 and 2017, during the thaw in relations under US President Barack Obama. The United States and Israel voted against in 2015 and 2017; in 2016, both abstained.

Some countries have shifted position as governments have changed, but many have held the same line for decades. Canada, China and Russia have long voted in favour, while the United States, backed by Israel, has voted against every year bar one.

A tightening squeeze

This year’s debate comes as the Trump administration has tightened the embargo – a move that has led to an energy crisis and possible humanitarian collapse, according to the UN Resident Coordinator in Cuba, Francisco Pichon.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has also warned that energy shortages are taking a toll on health.

In May, senior UN officials reported that more than 100,000 surgical procedures had been postponed. Cuban authorities have repeatedly pointed to further damage to the health system, including delays to vaccination programmes and patients with chronic illnesses unable to get a stable supply of medicines.

This year, President Donald Trump has also raised the possibility of military intervention in Cuba.

Successive UN High Commissioners for Human Rights and independent UN experts have condemned the embargo and other unilateral US sanctions, warning that they threaten Cubans’ rights to health, life, food and development.

Tensions spill over

Those tensions were on display in the chamber on Tuesday when Cuba’s Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, interrupted the US Ambassador, Mike Waltz, on a point of order midway through his statement.

The exchange escalated into a heated row between the two, prompting the President of the General Assembly to briefly suspend the session. The debate later resumed without further incident.

Mr. Waltz rejected the premise of the debate, arguing that Cuba’s crisis was the fault of its own government, not the embargo.

“There is no blockade,” he said. If there were, he argued, there would be no explaining US exports to Cuba – which he put at more than $876 million in the first eight months of 2026 – or shipments from Canada, Spain, Mexico, China, Russia, the European Union and UN agencies.

The country’s wealth had not vanished, he said, but had “simply” passed from ordinary Cubans into the hands of the ruling elite.

Mr. Rodríguez is due to deliver his statement on Wednesday.

What the resolution says

As in previous years, the Cuban-drafted text reaffirms the sovereign equality of States and the principles of non-intervention and non-interference in their internal affairs, as well as freedom of international trade and navigation – all enshrined in numerous international legal instruments.

It also voices concern over laws such as the Helms-Burton Act, enacted by the United States on 12 March 1996, whose extraterritorial effects, it says, undermine the sovereignty of other States, the legitimate interests of people and entities under their jurisdiction and freedom of trade and navigation.

It calls on all States to refrain from adopting such measures and urges those that still apply them to repeal them.