9 November 2026

The UN General Assembly adopted Cuba’s annual resolution against the US embargo on 28 October by 130 votes to 17. Both sides described the result as a victory: Cuba hailed the 34th consecutive year with a clear majority, while the US pointed to the 35-vote reduction in support.

More ‘no’ votes, abstentions and absences

The vote on Cuba’s resolution at the UN General Assembly, with the title ‘Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba’ was held on 28 October, having been preceded by vigorous campaigning (See Cuba Briefing 1326).

In the event, the resolution was approved by all of the countries of the African Union, most of the countries of Asia and the Middle East and included all the ‘Brics’ (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and Mexico, but the number of countries absenting themselves from the vote, abstaining or voting against the resolution increased for the second consecutive year (See chart).

Among the countries voting against the resolution for the first time were the United Arab Emirates, two European Union countries (the Czech Republic and Lithuania) and four countries from the Latin America and Caribbean region (Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Trinidad & Tobago). The number of abstentions rose from 12 in 2025 to 25 in 2026, and absences from the vote increased from 7 to 21.

Ten EU member states abstained (Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Latvia, Poland and Romania), and only 13 of the 27-member grouping voted in favour of the resolution. The EU spokesperson restated its opposition to the embargo and its “negative economic and humanitarian impact on the Cuban people” but also criticised the human rights situation in Cuba and Cuba’s abstention on UN resolutions condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine.

For the Caribbean Community, the decision by Trinidad and Tobago to vote against, together with abstentions by Jamaica, Guyana, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, marked the end of more than three decades of unanimity. Jamaica’s abstention was labelled by former Prime Minister, P J Patterson, who governed from 1992 to 2006, as an “abominable betrayal that history will never forget”. In the LAC region Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St Lucia, Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Venezuela did not vote.

Claims, counter-claims, threats, insults, denials

The US lobbying ahead of the UN vote was led by the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, who condemned the “corrupt, kleptocratic communist regime”, political repression and the existence of Cubans fighting on the Russian side in Ukraine. Waltz insisted that “there is no blockade” on the grounds that the US had exported more than US$876mn of licensed exports to Cuba in the first eight months of 2026. On the Cuban side, the government put the cost of US sanctions at a record US$8bn in the year to February 2026, to bring the cumulative total to US$178.7bn at current prices, emphasised the “collective punishment” that the Cuban population were suffering, and denied the US allegations.

The debate on 27 October produced an unprecedented confrontation in which Cuba’s Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, approached the podium to call the US Ambassador, Mike Waltz, “a liar” for having accused Cuban leaders of living in luxury, and for citing a Miami Herald allegation that the military conglomerate GAESA held billions of dollars in secret accounts. The President of the General Assembly, Khalilur Rahman, suspended the session briefly.

In the margins of the chamber, the US delegation accused Richard Tur de la Concepción, a first secretary at Cuba’s Mission to the United Nations, of shoving Waltz’s spokesman, J P Freire, who was filming the confrontation on his telephone. Tur was expelled from the United States the next day, with Cuba’s Permanent UN Representative, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, lodging a formal protest with the office of the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, alleging that the US official had harassed Tur.

Cuba Briefing – Issue 1327

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