Support for UN calls to end the Cuban embargo falls to its lowest level in 20 years

The text passed 130 votes in favor, 17 votes against, and 25 votes abstained. Last year the resolution was adopted by 165 votes to seven, with 12 abstentions.

The vote comes as Cuba struggles to overcome a severe energy crisis exacerbated by a US fuel embargo following the transfer of Venezuela’s president to New York, which has made life more difficult for people in the country.

Three decades of voting

This annual tally tracks changes in relations between Washington and Havana. When the assembly first voted in 1992, 59 countries supported the resolution, three opposed it and 71 countries abstained..

Support peaked at 191 votes in 2015 and 2017during and after the thaw under President Barack Obama. In 2016, the United States abstained for the first time.

The resolution submitted by Cuba quotes UN Charter the principles of sovereign equality, non-interference in internal affairs, and freedom of trade and navigation.

The law mentions the US Helms-Burton Act of 1996, whose extraterritorial reach affects companies and individuals in other countries, and urges countries with similar laws to repeal them. He also said that tougher measures implemented since 2017 had reversed relaxations made in 2015 and 2016.

‘No blockade’

US Ambassador Mike Waltz rejected the premise of the debate, arguing that Cuba’s problems stem from its own government.

“There is no blockade,” he said. He cited more than $876 million in American exports to the island in the first eight months of 2026, as well as shipments from Canada, Spain, Mexico, China, Russia, the European Union and UN agencies.

The nation’s wealth does not disappear, Waltz said, but “changes hands.” from ordinary Cubans to the ruling elite. He accused military-run business monopolies of hoarding resources.

A vote against the resolution, he told delegates, was “the only thing standing in the way of a kleptocratic communist regime and another propaganda victory at the expense of the Cuban people.”

The countdown is running

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla responded with an on-screen display showing the cost of the embargo since the debate opened on Tuesday: more than $22.9 million.

He blamed the embargo for strangling Cuba’s health system. He said infant mortality rates had doubled and tens of thousands of operations had been postponed or cancelled. Cancer drugs can’t get in, he said, and Cuban-made Alzheimer’s and dementia treatments can’t get out.

Rodríguez also said the United States is in the hands of a plutocracy and has no right to talk about democracy.

“All Cuba asks is to be left in peace,” he said. “Cuba is not a threat, but a blockade.”