The Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly on Wednes­day has, for the 33rd con­sec­u­tive year, adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for an end to the decades-long Unit­ed States em­bar­go against Cu­ba.

All 14 Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­tries vot­ed in sup­port of the res­o­lu­tion as an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of the UN’s 193 mem­ber states urged Wash­ing­ton to lift the mea­sures, de­spite a no­tice­able shift in coun­tries choos­ing to ei­ther ab­stain or side with  Wash­ing­ton.

The res­o­lu­tion, ti­tled Ne­ces­si­ty of end­ing the eco­nom­ic, com­mer­cial and fi­nan­cial em­bar­go im­posed by the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca against Cu­ba, was adopt­ed by 165 votes in favour, sev­en against, and twelve ab­sten­tions.

Last year, the mea­sure passed by 187 votes with two against (US and Is­rael) and just one ab­sten­tion (Moldo­va).

Those vot­ing against this year’s res­o­lu­tion were the US, Is­rael, Ar­genti­na, Hun­gary, Paraguay, North Mace­do­nia, and Ukraine.

“The Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment is sat­is­fied to see so many coun­tries send the regime a mes­sage that the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty will no longer 'tol­er­ate' its ac­tiv­i­ties,"  the US Am­bas­sador Jeff Bar­tos said.

The twelve ab­sten­tions came from Al­ba­nia, Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Czechia, Ecuador, Es­to­nia, Latvia, Lithua­nia, Mo­roc­co, Poland, Moldo­va and Ro­ma­nia.

The text re­it­er­ates the As­sem­bly’s long-stand­ing ap­peal for all States to re­ject puni­tive US leg­is­la­tion such as the Helms-Bur­ton Act of 1996, which Cu­ba and oth­er coun­tries ar­gue vi­o­lates in­ter­na­tion­al law and the UN Char­ter.

The As­sem­bly al­so high­light­ed mea­sures adopt­ed by US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma in 2015 and 2016 to mod­i­fy some as­pects of the em­bar­go, “which con­trast with the mea­sures ap­plied since 2017 [un­der the first Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion] to re­in­force its im­ple­men­ta­tion.”

Through the res­o­lu­tion, the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly al­so de­cid­ed once again to in­clude the em­bar­go text in the pro­vi­sion­al agen­da of next year’s ses­sion.

The Unit­ed States first im­posed an em­bar­go on the sale of weapons to Cu­ba on March 14, 1958, dur­ing the Ful­gen­cio Batista regime. By Oc­to­ber 19, 1960, al­most two years af­ter the Cuban Rev­o­lu­tion led to Batista’s over­throw, the Unit­ed States im­posed an em­bar­go on ex­ports, with the ex­cep­tion of food and med­i­cines, af­ter Cu­ba na­tion­alised Amer­i­can oil re­finer­ies with­out com­pen­sa­tion. With­in two years, the em­bar­go was ex­pand­ed, so it cov­ered al­most all ex­ports.

Since 1992, the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly has an­nu­al­ly adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion de­mand­ing an end to the Cuban eco­nom­ic em­bar­go, with the Unit­ed States and Is­rael be­ing the on­ly coun­tries that con­sis­tent­ly vote against these res­o­lu­tions.

CMC/ag/ir/2025

UNIT­ED NA­TIONS, Oct 29, CMC –