Cuba Takes Its Hunger Blockade Claim to the UN Security Council

CUBA · GEOPOLITICS

Cuba has carried its confrontation with Washington to the UN Security Council, accusing the United States of deepening hunger on the island through its decades-old embargo and a fresh round of sanctions on Cuban firms and officials.

What Havana told the Security Council

The Cuban government used a statement to the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, 25 August, to sharpen its case. It warned against the use of hunger as a weapon of war.

Conflicts, inequality and unilateral coercive measures are aggravating global food insecurity, the statement argued. Havana then tied Cuba’s own worsening food situation directly to US economic, commercial and financial restrictions.

Those restrictions are what Cuba calls the blockade. Washington calls the same policy an embargo, in place in various forms since the early 1960s.

The framing matters. Havana is no longer arguing only about sovereignty and trade law, but about food, medicine and energy reaching ordinary Cubans.

The sanctions that triggered the escalation

The Security Council intervention came days after Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez attacked Washington over the new measures. The latest measures targeted nine Cuban state-owned entities in mining, metals, construction, trade and imports.

Senior officials of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, known by its Spanish acronym ICAP, were also sanctioned. Its president, Fernando González Llort, is among them.

Rodríguez said the measures are particularly affecting containers carrying food, medicines and medical equipment. That includes supplies bought by Cuba’s private micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, the businesses Washington says it wants to encourage.

He aimed his fire directly at US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The policy, Rodríguez said, is designed to damage Cuba’s economy and stop Havana from guaranteeing basic services.

Energy starvation and a deepening crisis

Behind the diplomacy sits a severe shortage economy. Cuba struggles with fuel, electricity, food and medicine, and the shortages have worsened through 2026.

A US executive order from January 2026 tightened Cuba’s access to fuel. UN human rights experts later described the effect as energy starvation with severe human-rights implications.

The UN Human Rights Office reported in June that food production had fallen 60 percent. Medicine supplies stood at just 30 percent of normal levels.

The same reporting put infant mortality at 9.9 per 1,000 births, up from 4 in 2018. Childhood cancer survival rates have fallen to 65 percent.

Power cuts make everything worse. In some areas blackouts have lasted 20 to 22 hours a day, idling irrigation, refrigeration, hospitals and public transport.

The reform paradox at the heart of the dispute

The confrontation now carries a contradiction that both sides acknowledge. Washington presses Cuba to open its centrally controlled economy, while Havana says US sanctions make exactly those reforms harder.

The Associated Press reported this month that Cuba has widened space for private business, imports and exports, foreign investment and even private banking. Yet the measures, Cuban officials argue, scare away the investors those reforms are meant to attract.

Cuba’s ambassador to the UN, Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, put the question plainly. Why impose new sanctions, he asked, just as Havana opens sectors of the economy to private participation?

Fuel and electricity shortages, he added, are discouraging investors and tourists alike. Tourism was once Cuba’s biggest source of foreign currency after professional services exports.

Washington rejects the hunger charge. US officials say the measures pressure the Cuban government and close revenue loopholes, rather than deliberately depriving the population.

What to watch from here

Do not expect the Security Council to act. The United States holds a veto there, which is why Havana’s move is about narrative, not enforcement.

The real stage is the UN General Assembly. For more than three decades it has voted overwhelmingly, every year, to demand an end to the embargo.

What has changed is the argument. Hunger and medicine shortages now sit at the centre of Cuba’s case, backed by UN humanitarian data rather than Cuban government figures alone.

For foreigners trying to read the standoff, that is the shift to track. The question is no longer only whether the embargo is legal, but whether its civilian cost has become the bigger story.

Frequently Asked Questions

This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error