The United Nations General Assembly approved this Wednesday the annual resolution calling for an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba with 130 votes in favor, 17 against, and 25 abstentions, the worst result in history for Havana since it first introduced this initiative in 1992.
The official voting record, logged at 11 a.m. at the UN headquarters in New York, reflects an unprecedented collapse: in 2025, the resolution garnered 165 votes in favor and only seven against; in 2026, it lost an additional 35 supporters, and the opposing votes more than doubled.
The accumulated decline in just two years is even more dramatic when referencing 2024, when Cuba received 187 votes in favor and only two against. During this period, support decreased by 57 while opposition increased more than eightfold.
The 17 countries that voted against were: the United States, Israel, Argentina, Austria, Barbados, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Hungary, Lithuania, Morocco, North Macedonia, Paraguay, Slovenia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Ukraine.
Out of that group, seven had voted against in 2025 —the United States, Israel, Argentina, Hungary, North Macedonia, Paraguay, and Ukraine— while the other 12 changed their stance compared to the previous year: Austria, Barbados, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czechia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Lithuania, Morocco, Slovenia, and Trinidad and Tobago shifted from abstaining or voting in favor to voting outright against.
Among the 25 countries that abstained are Albania, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Chile, Croatia, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Latvia, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Palau, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Moldova, Romania, and the Solomon Islands. Germany, which had supported the resolution continuously since 2002, chose to abstain this time.
The decline in support had been anticipated. In July, a procedural vote to authorize an extraordinary debate on the embargo received only 136 votes in favor, with countries like Trinidad and Tobago and Germany already changing their historical pattern.
The immediate context of the vote was marked by the tense debate the previous day in the General Assembly, when the foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla physically advanced toward the podium where the U.S. ambassador Michael Waltz was speaking, forcing the Assembly president, Khalilur Rahman, to briefly suspend the session with a curt "Please return to your seat."
During that intervention, Waltz displayed to the delegates photographs of Fidel Castro's Rolex watches valued at $40,000, Hermès ties and Montblanc pens belonging to Díaz-Canel, and properties of the Castro family, in addition to citing an investigation by the Miami Herald which stated that the military business conglomerate GAESA accumulated $18 billion in profits and $14 billion in cash in secret accounts.
Despite the historic decline, the Cuban Foreign Ministry celebrated the result on social media with a graphic proclaiming "Victory for Cuba" and the slogan "Cuba is not a threat, the blockade is," stating that "the vast majority of the international community once again condemned the illegal and criminal U.S. blockade."
The resolution is not legally binding: its approval does not modify or lift the embargo, the elimination of which depends exclusively on the United States Congress. The most favorable point of comparison for Havana remains 2016, during the thaw with the Obama administration, when the resolution reached a record of 191 votes in favor and none against.
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