The Cuba Embargo: Why the World Votes Every Year, and Why the Vote Is Slipping

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution titled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” The vote was 130 in favour, 17 against and 25 abstentions. India was among the yes votes. In its statement, delivered by counsellor Soumya Nair, India said it rejects laws with extraterritorial effects that adversely affect the sovereignty of other states, and argued that lifting the restrictions would help Cuba pursue its development goals. India’s position is long-standing, since it backed the same resolution in 2024 when 187 nations voted yes and only the United States and Israel opposed.

The result is a win on paper and a warning in the numbers. Last year’s tally was 165 in favour, seven against and 12 abstentions. Support fell to its lowest level since 1995. Germany, Italy and Latvia were among the Western countries that abstained for the first time in 34 years. Colombia, which supported the measure in 2025, switched to opposition, while Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Nicaragua and Panama held firm. Argentina, Ukraine and Hungary were among the countries voting against.

Why the vote is a contest this year

Washington lobbied hard to peel off support. US Ambassador Mike Waltz said he was satisfied that major economies such as Korea and Germany had shifted their position. He also invoked the presence of Cubans fighting for Russia in Ukraine to lobby European capitals. Cuba accused the US of threatening countries ahead of the vote. The tension spilled onto the Assembly floor the day before: Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez approached Waltz and shouted that he was a liar, and the chair briefly suspended the session.

The two governments describe the same facts in opposite terms. Cuba calls the policy a blockade and says it is choking the island. Cuba’s health system faces shortages of over 60% of essential medicines, food production has fallen by more than 50% in five years, and fuel restrictions have deepened an energy crisis. Washington rejects the word. Waltz told the Assembly there is no blockade and said US exports to Cuba topped $876 million so far this year. He also said the plight of the Cuban people is exclusively the fault of a corrupt communist regime. The US position, in short, is that Cuba’s hardship comes from its own system and that sanctions press an authoritarian government. Cuba’s position is that sanctions are the cause and that they violate international law.

How old the issue is

The dispute dates to the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Fidel Castro’s government nationalised American-owned property, moved close to the Soviet Union, and the US began cutting trade. The embargo was first imposed in 1960, and UN documents describe the current restrictions as 64 years old, reflecting the broad embargo declared in 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Washington’s policy has since layered on additional laws. The Helms-Burton Act of 1996 is the most contested, because it penalises trade or investment by other countries with Cuba, which is what most states object to. It also moved the decision to Congress, and only a vote in US Congress can end the embargo.

Cuba began bringing the resolution to the General Assembly in the early 1990s. It has been put to a vote every year since 1992 except 2020, when the pandemic prevented one, making this the 34th adoption. For decades the margin was huge. In 2018, 189 countries voted yes and only the US and Israel voted no. The US abstained for the first time in 2016 during the Obama-era thaw, but returned to voting no the following year.

What the vote does and does not do

General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding. The resolution does not require Washington to change its sanctions policy. Its value is political, as a yearly measure of how isolated or supported the policy is. For the countries that vote yes, India among them, the argument is less about Cuba’s government than about principle: opposition to one state’s laws reaching into other countries’ trade, and a long tradition of Non-Aligned solidarity. Countries that abstain or vote no generally cite Cuba’s human rights record, its political system, or its ties to Russia.

The 2026 vote shows both sides can claim something. Cuba still won a clear majority. Washington can point to the sharpest erosion in the margin in three decades. Whether that drop is a lasting shift or a one-year reaction to American pressure is the question next October’s vote will start to answer.