The voices followed each other this Wednesday at the UN General Assembly to call for the end of the US embargo against Cuba, which has been in force for more than 60 years, in the analysis of a draft resolution presented by the authorities in Havana to be submitted to its vote. Thursday.
The draft resolution “It is necessary to end the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” is a request for states in general not to use this type of measures that affect the economies of countries that suffer from them.
The text “reaffirms the sovereign equality of all states, non-intervention and non-interference in their internal affairs and freedom of trade and navigation” and asks states “not” to apply laws and measures such as the Cuban embargo. .
Likewise, it expressed its “concern about the continued promulgation and application” of laws such as the US Helms-Burton law (in force since 1996), which have extraterritorial effects for people and companies doing business in Cuba.
Since 1992, Cuba has presented every year a draft resolution condemning the US embargo that has marked the lives of Cubans, since more than 80 percent live under the sanctions imposed by Washington in 1962 on communist island, which is also included in the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Although in 2015 – under the government of Barak Obama – the Cuban and US governments began a process of normalization of diplomatic relations, the embargo remains strong and, for its detractors, it is the main obstacle in the development of Cuba.
The Cuban government’s strong repression of anti-government demonstrations in July 2021, which left more than a thousand prisoners – about 700 remain in prison with sentences of up to 25 years – and led to with exile, did not contribute to the desired change that was made. expected from the Democratic administration of Joe Biden, after his predecessor Donald Trump hardened the island.
Obstacle to development
Cuban authorities estimate that the six-decade embargo has cost its economy more than 159 billion dollars. Only between March 2022 and February 2023, the blockade will cause a loss of 4,867 million dollars.
However, the economy will grow by nine percent, they said. And migration is a “direct effect of the intensification of the blockade,” they warned in a brochure distributed to the press.
Due to the “severe economic situation” caused by the effects of Covid-19, high oil prices and the consequences of the natural disasters that Cuba has recently suffered, “it is urgent to end this embargo, ” asked the representative of Mexico in the tribune, Alicia Buenrostro Massieu.
With Mexico, several countries individually or for blocs of countries such as CELAC (which brings together countries from Latin America and the Caribbean), the G77 + China, with 134 members, SICA (Central American Integration System) advocates putting an end to this “cruel and anachronistic policy”, as explained by the Salvadoran representative Egriselda López, for the Central Americans.
For the representative of Uganda, Godfrey Kwoba, who spoke on behalf of the G77 + China, the inclusion of Cuba in the list of states that promote terrorism by the US State Department, “not only represents damage to the reputation but one of the main element of the recent strengthening of the embargo”.
The United States will be one of the last countries to speak according to the list of more than fifty registered speakers, before proceeding to vote on the draft resolution, which is scheduled to end on Thursday morning.
From the same rostrum, during the high-level week of the UN General Assembly, Cuban President Miguel DÃaz-Canel called the embargo a “true siege and extraterritorial, cruel and silent economic war.”
