Despite pressure campaigns led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Permanent Representative to the UN, Mike Waltz, 130 countries supported the Cuban resolution, while 17 voted against it, and 25 abstained.

Before the vote, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla warned that the United States Government had unleashed “a wave of pressure, intimidation, and blackmail against many member states, with the coercive, illegal, immoral, and unjustified demand that they leave their long-standing position, a stance they have consistently and reasonably kept for decades as a sovereign act of State.”

He argued that “no people deserve the suffering and abuse currently being imposed upon us,” stressing that the aggression against his country includes “a fuel blockade, tantamount to a naval blockade, which is an act of war, an act of collective punishment, and genocide, all of which are prohibited under international law.”

He added that its severe consequences fall on the people, restrict their fundamental human rights, affect third nations, and turn the population’s essential needs into tools for political coercion.

“Cuba is not a threat! The blockade is the threat!” Rodriguez concluded at this annual review, which took place here on October 27-28.

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