Cuba: Ending the U.S. Economic Embargo - Draft Resolution Voting | UNGA 78 | United Nations

On Nov. 2, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) will meet to discuss the necessity of ending the economic, commercial, and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba and vote on a draft resolution in this regard.

The UN General Assembly today (2 Nov) voted by a large margin against the United States' economic and trade embargo against Cuba, first imposed in 1960.

A total of 187 States voted for the resolution put forward each year against the embargo, with only the US and Israel voting against, and Ukraine abstaining.

Speaking before the vote. Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said the US embargo “violates the right to life, the right to health, and the right to education and the well-being of all Cuban men and women.”

Rodríguez Parrilla said Cuban families “feel the effects of this blockade through the fact that shops are lacking goods and there are long queues, as well as excessively high prices and low salaries.”

The Cuban official said, “the US government is lying when it asserts that the blockade does not prevent access to medicines or medical equipment,” and added that “at the most difficult points of the COVID 19 pandemic, when cases peaked, and our intensive care units were overcrowded and exceeding capacity, Cuba was not allowed to import ventilators on the pretext that European companies supplying those machines were subsidiaries of US businesses.”

Rodríguez Parrilla also said, “the US government is lying, and is severely hampering international efforts to combat terrorism when it accuses Cuba without any grounds for doing so, of being a country that sponsors that scourge.”

There isn't a single valid or reasonable argument to keep Cuba in that spurious list.”

Speaking after the vote, US representative Paul Folmsbee said, “the United States remains a significant source of humanitarian goods to the Cuban people, and one of Cuba's principal trading partners. In 2002 alone, US companies exported over 295 million dollars’ worth of agricultural goods to Cuba, including food to help meet the needs of the Cuban people. The United States opposes this resolution. We encourage this body to urge the Cuban government to adhere to its human rights obligations and listen to the Cuban people and their aspirations to determine their own future.”

The resolution’s full title is the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”.

The General Assembly reiterated its call for all States to refrain from promulgating and applying such restrictive laws and measures, in conformity with their obligations under the UN Charter and international law.