The Cuban regime showcased one of its most striking paradoxes on the international stage this Tuesday: the Cuban mission in Geneva promoted the approval of a resolution regarding children’s right to adequate nutrition before the UN Human Rights Council, while its own children suffer from one of the worst documented food crises in the recent history of the Island.
The Council approved resolution L.32, titled "Improving Equitable Access for Children to Adequate and Nutritious Food," presented by Cuba along with other countries.
The text urges against implementing measures contrary to International Law that restrict minors' access to nutritious food and calls for strengthening international cooperation and technology transfer.
Aimé Triana, second secretary of the Cuban mission to the UN in Geneva, defended the initiative with global figures: 181 million children live in severe food poverty, 150 million children under five suffer from stunted growth, and 43 million are experiencing wasting.
"The agreed-upon commitments will not be fulfilled. Hunger and malnutrition will not be eliminated by 2030. Access to nutritious food for all children will not be guaranteed," the diplomat warned before the organization.
Triana took advantage of the forum to blame the U.S. embargo for the food situation in Cuba: "By imposing a criminal blockade on Cuba, the United States insists on depriving our children of their right to proper and healthy food."
"That country is preventing more than 7,000 containers—already purchased and filled with food and medicines—from entering Cuba."
The complaint about the detained containers is not new: Vice Prime Minister Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga raised it in July 2026, and Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez reiterated it before the UN in September, as part of a systematic diplomatic strategy by the regime to attribute the food crisis solely to external sanctions.
What the Cuban diplomat omitted before the Council is that the food crisis on the Island has deep and internal structural causes.
Between 2018 and 2023, national pork production fell by 95%, rice production by 87%, bean production by 70%, and milk production by 58%, as a direct consequence of the centralized agricultural model that has collapsed production for decades.
The data about Cuban children sharply contrasts with the regime's discourse in Geneva. UNICEF reported in November 2025 that approximately 9% of Cuban children suffer from severe food insecurity.
The Food Monitor Program estimated in April 2026 that 96.91% of the population lacks adequate access to food and that 33.9% of households had at least one person who went to bed hungry in the previous 30 days.
The Minister of Food Industry, Alberto López Díaz, admitted in June 2026 that more than 100,000 children were not receiving their daily milk ration. 48.5% of schoolchildren aged six to eleven do not receive meals or snacks at their educational centers.
Deaths from malnutrition in Cuba increased from 43 to 75 between 2022 and 2023, a rise of 74%, according to data attributed to the National Office of Statistics and Information.
In light of the magnitude of the crisis, the UN had to intervene: the World Food Programme activated an emergency project in July 2026 to feed 12,677 children in 74 educational centers across 19 municipalities in the five eastern provinces of Cuba, while the Executive Board of the WFP approved a $116 million assistance plan for the Island.
"No government should have a policy of provoking hunger in other nations," Triana concluded before the Human Rights Council, without anyone in the room pointing out that this statement could apply, with equal or greater relevance, to the very government she represents.
Related videos:
Filed under: