For the 29th time, the United Nations condemns the US economic embargo against Cuba

The UN condemned Wednesday in the vote on a resolution, for the 29th time and again with an overwhelming majority, the economic embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba for six decades, only Washington and Israel voting against.

For the 29th time, the United Nations has passed a resolution against the economic embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba. This condemnation has been annual at the UN since 1992. Last year, there was no vote because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Out of 193 members of the United Nations, 184 countries voted for this condemnation and three countries abstained: Brazil, Colombia and Ukraine. The United States abstained only once, in 2016, after a rapprochement operated by the administration of Democrat Barack Obama.

Trump backtrack

The two countries reestablished their relations in 2015. But former Republican President Donald Trump reversed this historic rapprochement: he again called the communist country a state linked to terrorism and imposed nearly 250 new sanctions which provoked an energy and fuel crisis, restricts the movement of American tourists and limits the sending of funds from Cuban Americans to their relatives in Cuba.

To date, Democratic President Joe Biden, who had participated in the rapprochement with Cuba as vice-president to Barack Obama, has not canceled any of the sanctions imposed by Donald Trump since his arrival in the White House in January.

In the last vote, in November 2019, the United States, Israel and for the first time Brazil led by Jair Bolsonaro, voted against. Colombia, from which President Ivan Duque was a great ally of Donald Trump’s administration, had abstained.

No effect on the Cuban diet

The American embargo, imposed 59 years ago and tightened several times, did not result in putting an end to the Cuban communist regime.

Cuba assures that since President John Kennedy imposed an economic embargo on Cuba in February 1962, in the middle of the Cold War, the repercussions for the Cuban economy amount to tens of billions of dollars lost.

The Cuban embargo is imposed by US law and only the US Congress can end it.

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