Cuba Demands at UNHRC the End of Unilateral Coercive Measures

Cuba's ambassador to the UN-Geneva, Juan Antonio Quintanilla, called today at the Human Rights Council for the end of unilateral coercive measures, such as the U.S. economic, commercial and financial blockade against the island.

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“Unilateral coercive measures are illegal and illegitimate, and from every point of view contrary to International Law and the Charter of the United Nations”, he stated when speaking during the debates of the 51st session of the Council.

In an interactive dialogue with the special rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures, Alena Douhan, the Cuban diplomat denounced these actions directly attack the sovereignty of states, harm developing countries in particular and seriously hinder efforts for economic and social development.

Likewise, they affect the promotion of the enjoyment of human rights of their peoples, and should not be considered as “sanctions”, but as what they are, criminal unilateral acts of pressure and indiscriminate economic warfare, used by the powerful to try to achieve geopolitical objectives, he underlined.

Quintanilla recalled in the forum that Cuba is one of the countries targeted by these actions, which, although they do not succeed in subduing the people, still cause a lot of damage and suffering, constituting severe violations of human rights.

"We reiterate the denunciation and rejection of the United States blockade, which impacts all sectors of life in my country, every day, for more than 60 years", he stressed.

The island’s ambassador to UN-Geneva, repudiated the economic damage accumulated by a siege rejected year after year by the international community in the United Nations General Assembly, and described the human impact of this hostile policy as incalculable.

Washington intensified its blockade in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic with at least 50 measures, of the 243 adopted by the Donald Trump administration (2017-2021) to increase pressure on the island nation, almost all of them maintained by his successor Joseph Biden,

“The blockade is the most severe and prolonged system of unilateral coercive measures that has been applied against any country in history. Its ultimate goal is to impose a foreign political system on Cuba, and thus strengthen the agenda of imperial domination, in Latin America and the Caribbean, synthesized in the so-called Monroe Doctrine,” said Quintanilla.

However, he ratified before the Human Rights Council that the island will not bow in the face of aggression and threats.