U.S. asks U.N. members to vote against Cuba’s annual resolution on the embargo

By Ifeoma Larkin

WASHINGTON — The United States is asking members of the United Nations General Assembly to vote against Cuba’s annual resolution calling for an end to the U.S. embargo, with the vote expected Tuesday or Wednesday in New York, according to Al Jazeera and Reuters and the Associated Press.

The administration’s case is that Cuba’s government, not the embargo, is responsible for the island’s economic crisis. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz made that argument at a U.S.-hosted panel at U.N. headquarters on Oct. 19. “For 67 years the Castro regime has sold the world a myth,” Waltz said, according to the U.S. Mission’s transcript. “The lie is that the revolution liberated Cuba, and that the Cuban people’s suffering is always someone else’s fault.”

Waltz told delegates that “more than 800 political prisoners languish in Cuban prisons,” and he cited reporting by Nora Gámez Torres of the Miami Herald on financial records of GAESA, the military-run conglomerate, which he said showed “$18 billion in current assets, including $14.5 billion in financial accounts.” He also said Cuban nationals had been sent to fight for Russia in Ukraine and that “every dollar of their wages goes right back to the regime.”

The resolution, which the Assembly has adopted every year since 1992, is nonbinding. The embargo is written into U.S. law, including the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, and only Congress can repeal it.

A narrower margin last year

Last year’s vote showed movement toward the U.S. position. On Oct. 29, 2025, the Assembly adopted the resolution 165 to 7, with 12 abstentions, according to UN News. A year earlier it had passed 187 to 2, with only the United States and Israel opposed and Moldova abstaining.

In 2025, Argentina, Hungary, Paraguay, North Macedonia and Ukraine joined the United States and Israel in voting no. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Costa Rica, Czechia, Ecuador, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Moldova and Romania abstained. Poland, speaking for itself and four other countries, tied its abstention to Cuba’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, UN News reported.

Waltz has said the United States raised that issue directly with European governments this year. “Yes, we’ve asked many of our European colleagues: Given this evidence from the Ukrainian government, how can they continue to vote for this resolution that is a propaganda tool for the Cuban regime and that is directly affecting their national security?” he said at an Oct. 19 briefing, Al Jazeera reported.

Havana’s response

Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, said on Oct. 21 that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Waltz were personally leading the campaign, and he accused U.S. officials of threatening countries with suspended cooperation programs and visa denials if they did not change their votes. “It is a new and dangerous way of conducting multilateral diplomacy,” Rodríguez wrote on X, according to Al Jazeera. The State Department and the U.S. Mission did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment on those allegations.

Cuba’s ambassador to the U.N., Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, and other Cuban diplomats confronted Waltz as he left the Oct. 19 panel. Waltz afterward accused Cuban diplomats of harassing and intimidating participants, Al Jazeera reported.

The panel featured Cuban dissident José Daniel Ferrer, artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, economist Emilio Morales and researcher María Werlau, as well as Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., whose mother fled Cuba in 1959, according to the transcript.

What to watch

The vote will show whether last year’s shift holds or grows. Since the start of 2026, the administration has also increased economic pressure on Havana, including by moving to block oil shipments and threatening tariffs on countries that supply Cuba with fuel, Al Jazeera reported.

The Washington Inquisitor sought comment from the U.S. Mission to the U.N., the State Department, Cuba’s mission to the U.N. and groups that follow U.S.-Cuba policy. They did not immediately respond to a request for comment.