The United States lost its campaign to scuttle a United Nations General Assembly debate on its decades-old embargo on Cuba as member states voted overwhelmingly against Washington to clear the rostrum for countries to deliberate on wide-ranging, more restrictive sanctions that have grounded Havana’s economy. Emotions ran high between the US and Cuba.
Member states voted 136 to 9, with 30 abstentions, on July 7 to proceed with a long session of speeches mostly condemning Washington’s 70-plus-year-old embargo on Cuba. The small, beleagured island country had requested an additional debate of the annual agenda item dedicated to the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the US against Cuba. Early this year, the US restricted fuel shipments to the country and later imposed more sanctions, leading to power blackouts and severe food shortages, among other crippling conditions.
The General Assembly session marked the second time it deliberated on the embargo this year, but there was no resolution condemning the US restrictions, except to convey Cuba’s rapidly deteriorating situation.
The US was joined by eight other countries to try to deny Cuba’s request for a debate. Argentina, Israel and Paraguay, stalwart US voting allies in the Assembly, were joined by a few newcomers, such as Costa Rica and Morocco. The Czech Republic, North Macedonia and Ukraine made up the rest.
“In the last few months, the humanitarian damage to our population has intensified and led to worsening in the quality of life,” said Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, during a 25-minute-long speech he gave at the rostrum. “The hostility and threats that Cuba faces today are part of a worrying sequence of violations of international law and are a prelude of what might happen to any other country tomorrow.”
The US representative, Jeff Bartos, who had called for a vote to block the debate, described the meeting as wasteful and politically motivated, adding that the $84,000 cost of convening for three hours could instead buy emergency health kits, solar lanterns or food for thousands of Cuban families.
“Havana calls this meeting year after year, and now twice in one session, because it wants to make this Assembly complicit in its machinery of repression,” Bartos, who described himself as the “budget guy,” told the Assembly on Tuesday. “It wants the UN to buy it another propaganda clip, it wants to use your voices and your silence to show the world that a brutal Communist dictatorship can keep polite company.”
Rodríguez countered the remarks by Bartos by saying the effect of US sanctions have worsened in the last seven months, likening the fuel blockade to a “naval blockade.” He quoted President Trump as having said that he did not “think you can have much more pressure other than going in and destroying the place.”
Rodríguez said infant mortality rose to 9.9 deaths per 1,000 live births under the intensifying sanctions; childhood cancer-survival rates fell to 65 percent from 85 percent; and economic damages of $8.083 billion have accrued over the past year alone. The US did not deny these effects but blamed Cuba’s problems on its own government.
“The cumulative impact of the blockade, since it was first imposed, amounts to $178,700,000,000 at current prices,” Rodríguez said, rejecting Washington’s assertions that Cuba’s economic troubles are self-inflicted.
The estranged US-Cuba relationship started over seven decades ago, when former US President Eisenhower cut off exports after Fidel Castro nationalized American-owned businesses without compensation. President Kennedy converted the punishment into a full trade embargo in February 1962.
The embargo has been loosened and tightened by successive administrations ever since then, but Trump reimposed some of the sanctions that were lifted by previous presidents. Since January 2025, the Trump administration has pursued a maximum-pressure campaign, reimposing travel and financial restrictions and restoring Cuba to the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
On Jan. 29, 2026, Trump signed Executive Order 14380, declaring a national emergency over what he called Cuba’s “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US security and authorizing tariffs on any country supplying the island with oil, providing no proof of Cuba’s dangers. A follow-up order on May 1 extended secondary-sanctions risk to foreign banks and companies doing business with Cuban entities in energy, defense, mining, finance and security.
Mike Waltz, the US envoy to the UN, spoke vehemently from the Assembly rostrum when the debate got into full swing. He said the real embargo was imposed by the Cuban regime against its own people, citing repression of speech, faith, enterprise, dissent and human rights. More than 800 political prisoners are jailed for peaceful expression, he said, naming an artist, a musician and a poet each imprisoned by the Cuban government because of their work.
‘Pound away’
“The only embargo in Cuba is the guillotine the regime keeps over the heads of its people,” Waltz said. Rodríguez occasionally banged the plastic earpiece at his seat in the Assembly to protest Waltz’s remarks (and Bartos’s), prompting Waltz to shout at at one point: “You can pound away my friend. This is not Havana. This is the United States of America. This is the United Nations. And we will speak, we will be heard, and we will not be silenced like your own people. So, pound away.”
Independent human-rights monitors have documented the repression of Cuba’s one-party Communist government. Human Rights Watch’s most recent annual report found that Cuban authorities held hundreds of political prisoners, including artists and musicians convicted for actions as narrow as social-media posts or displaying protest slogans.
The government has denied independent monitors access to its prisons; judicial courts remain subordinate to the Communist Party, according to Human Rights Watch; and the state controls virtually all media, periodically blocking news sites and restricting mobile data for critics.
Most of the speeches delivered in the first three hours of the session (costing the UN, according to Bartos’s original predictions, approximately $84,000) were made on behalf of regional and political groupings, a possible work-around to avoid fallout from the US, which had pressured countries from speaking against its actions in Cuba.
A leaked State Department cable, reported by The Nation, revealed Washington’s coordinated campaign to suppress the Assembly debate by pressing allies to publicly rebuke Cuba, telling nonaligned states to stay silent and warning traditionally pro-Cuba governments it would be “listening very closely.”
Over several hours, representatives spoke for the Group of 77 and China, totaling 134 developing nations; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations; the Non-Aligned Movement’s 121 members; the Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter; the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; the Caribbean Community; the African Group; and the European Union.
Each bloc condemned the embargo’s extraterritorial reach and called for Cuba’s removal from the US list of state-sponsored terrorism. The Group of 77 and China criticized new measures obstructing oil supplies and sanctioning third states as contrary to the UN Charter, international law and a rules-based, nondiscriminatory multilateral trading system.
The African Group, whose remarks were delivered by Mali’s ambassador to the UN, called to end the blockade, to remove post-2017 additional measures and reiterated support for Cuba’s international medical cooperation, adding that the country poses no threat to international peace and security.
The European Union condemned the embargo’s “adverse humanitarian impact” and reaffirmed support for a diplomatic resolution but criticized Havana’s human rights record and support of Russia in the Ukraine war through votes in the General Assembly and sending soldiers to help Putin fight against Ukraine.
“The EU will continue its critical yet constructive engagement with Cuba to support the country’s institutional, economic, social and political modernization; we stand ready to share our experience,” Stavros Lambrinidis, the EU ambassador, said.
Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
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Damilola, thank you for another great contribution. The position of African leaders is clear, they do not want to participate in a genocide of Cuban people. History tells us that there is not one way towards development as we all know it, capitalism is not the only way as demonstrated in China which is the second world global economy! We all know that without imperialism i.e. grabbing other people’s goods and means, capitalism is not sustainable. Today the US is exploiting the oil of Venezuela after kidnaping President Maduro as it has done for decades in Iran under the Sha’s criminal rules. Today the US has become the international thief without any shame and regret, a country committing war crimes which has zero respect for human rights and international rule of law!
How Long Is Long Enough? Persuasive Politics or Persuasive Diplomacy?
For more than six decades, the United States embargo against Cuba has remained one of the longest-running sanctions regimes in modern history. First introduced in 1960 and formally expanded in 1962, it has outlived generations, political administrations, and profound changes in the international landscape.
The recent inability of Washington to prevent another debate at the United Nations General Assembly on the embargo invites a broader question—one that transcends Cuba and the United States:
How long is long enough?
History reminds us that humanity has repeatedly chosen reconciliation over perpetual division. Former enemies have become trusted partners. Nations once devastated by war have forged lasting alliances. Families have healed. Communities have overcome injustice. Societies continue striving to reconcile with the painful legacies of slavery, conflict, and oppression.
If reconciliation has been possible in so many difficult chapters of history, why should any political dispute be considered beyond the reach of diplomacy?
This is not an argument that history should be forgotten, nor that legitimate political or security concerns should be ignored. Rather, it is an appeal to reflect on whether prolonged isolation continues to advance its intended objectives—or whether renewed engagement may offer greater promise for peace, stability, and human dignity.
Diplomacy was never intended to preserve stalemate. Its highest purpose is to transform disagreement into dialogue, confrontation into cooperation, and distrust into opportunities for peaceful coexistence.
The United Nations was founded on the belief that nations should settle their differences through peaceful means. That principle remains as vital today as it was in 1945.
The question, therefore, is larger than the relationship between Cuba and the United States. It is about the enduring purpose of diplomacy itself. After more than sixty-four years, can the United States and Cuba find the political courage to deepen engagement and allow diplomacy to shape a more constructive future for their peoples and for the international community?
At a time when the world faces growing geopolitical tensions, humanitarian crises, and economic uncertainty, the international community should continue to encourage dialogue wherever it is possible. Genuine diplomacy does not demand surrender; it demands courage, patience, mutual respect, and a willingness to imagine a future different from the past.
Perhaps the time has come not merely to ask how long a policy has endured, but whether it has achieved its intended purpose.
For the sake of humanity, peace, dignity, and future generations, diplomacy deserves every opportunity to succeed where prolonged confrontation has struggled.
As Dag Hammarskjöld wisely observed:
“The United Nations was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.”
May that timeless vision continue to inspire nations to choose dialogue over division, reconciliation over resentment, and persuasive diplomacy over perpetual political estrangement.
After all, how long is long enough?