Cuba ranks fourth worldwide in urgent action requests registered with the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED), with 217 petitions accumulated since 2012, a figure only surpassed by Mexico, Iraq, and Colombia.
The data is included in the periodic report CED/C/31/2, dated September 30, 2026, which summarizes the urgent action requests received by the Committee between March and August and provides an updated total since this mechanism was implemented. The document was referenced this Sunday by The Rio Times.
According to that report, Mexico tops the list with 877 applications, followed by Iraq with 670; Colombia with 255; and Cuba with 217. Far behind is Ecuador, with 43.
The Cuban figure is strongly influenced by the anti-government protests of July 11, 2021.
Of the 217 requests recorded since 2012, 188 correspond to 2021, when hundreds of people were detained in various provinces of the country and numerous families reported for hours or days that they were unaware of the whereabouts of their loved ones.
The data does not mean that the United Nations has verified 217 permanent enforced disappearances in Cuba. The table accounts for urgent action requests received by the Committee, a mechanism that can be activated when family members or representatives report that a person detained by state agents cannot be located or when authorities refuse to officially provide information about their whereabouts.
The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance defines this type of violation as a deprivation of liberty attributable to state agents, followed by a refusal to acknowledge that detention or to conceal the fate or whereabouts of the person.
In the Cuban case, many of the requests ended up being closed after the detainees reappeared in state custody. The report accounts for 173 closed requests, 27 discontinued, and 17 that remain open.
The UN itself stated at the conclusion of its thirty-first session that, between March 1 and August 31, 2026, it received 181 new requests for urgent action worldwide.
During that same period, 28 cases were closed after locating the missing persons, bringing the total number of individuals found since the procedure began to 574, of which 437 are alive.
Cuba also ranks among the countries with the most new requests in 2026. The report records 17 Cuban petitions related to events that occurred this year, a figure only lower than that of Mexico, which has accumulated 73.
Among these cases are individuals linked to various incidents that occurred during the year. One of them is related to the February incident involving a vessel from Florida intercepted by the Border Guard Troops off the coast of Villa Clara.
Another one of the files pertains to Andrés Matos Alcántara, known as Matos MC K-LIBRE, who was arrested on June 25 after attending a police summons at the Siboney unit in the Playa municipality of Havana.
The report also includes the arrests related to the fire that occurred in June at the Orlando Pantoja Tamayo House-Museum, in Maffo, Contramaestre municipality. The building was engulfed in flames during a day of protests in Santiago de Cuba.
Among those arrested in connection with these events were adolescents. It was later documented that at least three minors arrested in June were linked to the case opened following the fire at the museum.
Another of the cases included in the urgent actions of 2026 is that of artist and opponent Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. State Security agents removed him from Guanajay prison in July without initially informing his family about his whereabouts.
The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearance then initiated an urgent action to locate Otero Alcántara, after his whereabouts remained officially unreported.
Cuban authorities have historically denied that forced disappearance constitutes an institutional practice in the country.
During the protests of July 11, officials from the Ministry of the Interior denied that there were any missing persons and attributed the reports to misinformation.
The 2026 report, however, shows that Cuba continues to generate urgent requests before the CED five years after 11J, and that some of these remain related to periods of communication breakdown in which families officially do not know the whereabouts of the detainees.
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